Beyond Here, It's Nothin'
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: 3rd story in Ramble On series. 2007. Heaven's conspiracy with Hell is a secret known only to angels, and can't be revealed or stopped. Over the course of Dean's last year, Ellie finds a way to break the contract that Hell holds over him, and Dean and Sam are forced to trust in a demon's word, and nothing can stop the destiny that waits for them. No slash.
1. Chapter 1

**Beyond Here, It's Nothin'**

* * *

**Chapter 1**

_There is a peacefulness that follows any decision, even the wrong one._

_~ Rita Mae Brown_

* * *

_**February 12th 2007. Tangiers, Morocco.**_

"Have you checked the lines of Destiny, Uriel?" Raphael walked to the rail of the balcony. Beneath him the Mediterranean Sea stretched to the northern horizon, the colours ranging from turquoise to cerulean, deepening to indigo where the shallow land shelf dropped away. Along the coastline fishing boats, dhows and pleasure craft were dotted like randomly thrown confetti across the surface. The breeze was light, fitful but cooling at this height. At the shoreline it would be stifling.

"Yes, it has to be Dean Winchester," the angel said, the dark skin of his vessel gleaming with perspiration in the bright sunlight. He disliked being down here, even so far from the monkeys. "He's the correct line, and Alastair has advised that there's no hope that his father can be broken. Dean is the only one left."

Raphael's dark eyes narrowed for a moment, his expression cold as he stared across the sea. "No, there is one other," he said, almost absently correcting his subordinate. "But Dean will do the job well enough. What about the other half of the prophecy? Will he be strong enough to bring it all down?"

Uriel shook his head, smiling. "He is in a state of collapse, has been since John Winchester sacrificed himself. We may not have had the leverage while his father was alive, but there's no problem with it now."

"Good." The archangel looked disinterestedly at the people far below, scurrying like ants about their business. "I expect you to do your utmost to ensure that this goes as planned, Uriel. Everything depends on it."

"I understand," Uriel promised, moving to the rail to stand near Raphael but not too close to the archangel. "I will not fail."

Raphael turned his head slowly to look at the angel. His expression was chillingly blank, the dark eyes of his vessel filled with the zealous fire of a fanatic. "You had better not, Uriel."

He turned away dismissively, and Uriel sagged a little against the rail, dragging in a deep breath of salt-laden air. The plans of the archangel had been in place for a long time. The pieces had been moved in to position. The end game would mean everything to Heaven.

The thoughts were blasphemous and he tilted his head a little, looking up into the clear sky, wondering if any of them would be struck down before the end. He didn't think so. Their Father had left, possibly longer ago than any of them even realised. They were alone and adrift, and they were making their own destinies now.

* * *

_**April 5th, 2007. Nebraska**_

Jo looked up as the door opened, her heart lurching a little in her chest as she saw the broad shoulders and short, dark hair of the man who walked in. He was turned away from her, talking to the taller young man who walked in behind him, but she would have known him anywhere, that deep voice, rumbling indistinctly as he spoke to his brother.

She walked to the bar, ducking under the hatch as they came up to the counter and sat down.

"Hey," she said, nodding to Sam and flicking a glance at Dean from under her lashes. There was still a level of discomfort with Sam, the memory of Duluth hard to get past. It hadn't been him, but when she closed her eyes and in memory, felt the jerk as he'd tightened the bonds on her wrists, it was his face she saw.

"Hey, Jo," Sam said, pulling off his jacket. "Just a beer, thanks."

Dean rested his elbows on the bar and smiled at her, a little absently, she thought. "Same again."

"What've you two been up to?" she asked, pulling a couple of long necks from the fridge and passing them across the counter.

"Same old," Dean said, twisting the top off and tipping the bottle up. "What about you?"

"Not much," she said, glancing over her shoulder as her mother came through the hatch.

"Boys, good to see you," Ellen said, walking over to stand beside her daughter, her expression wary. "You staying long?"

"Uh," Dean glanced at his brother. "A few hours. R&R."

She nodded. "Ash says he's close to something, he'll know in a couple of hours."

She glanced around them, making sure that none of the few customers scattered thinly at the tables had overhead her. Dean followed the glance, noting that most of them were hunters. His gaze cut to Sam.

Jo watched as Dean exchanged a glance with his brother. "So, you two want rethink the something to eat?"

Dean turned back to her, his smile warmer this time. "Why not."

She smiled back, feeling her heart stumble again. "What'll it be?"

"Bacon and cheese burger, fries," Dean said, his eyes half-closing in anticipation. Sam shook his head.

"BLT for me," he told her. She nodded, and turned away, ducking under the hatch in the counter and slipping into the small kitchen behind the bar. She put a fresh basket of fries into the hot oil, turning to the fridge to get patties, bacon, tomatoes, cheese and rolls, wondering again why she couldn't get Dean Winchester out of her head.

* * *

Pushing his plate aside when he finished the meal, Dean caught Jo's gaze as she walked by. "Good burger."

"Thanks."

She nodded with as much indifference as she could manage, leaning past him to pick up his plate. She picked up Sam's and carried them out to the kitchen, rinsing them and stacking them in the dishwasher. Sam was standing by the jukebox when she came out, looking at his phone, and Dean tilted his head toward the pool table.

"You want a game?"

"Still working, maybe later," she told him, glancing at her mother. Ellen stood by the middle of the bar's u-shaped counter, her head very slightly turned toward them, listening.

"Okay," he nodded agreeably, picking up his beer.

It wasn't that he wasn't friendly, she thought, going around the tables and collecting glasses and bottles, loading her tray and wiping the tables down with a clean cloth. He didn't seem to be any more than friendly, even the last time they'd been in, before Sam's possession, he'd been arguing with her over her taste in music, like a –

- _like a big brother_. The thought came into her head, immediately followed by Sam's words in the bar.

'_Cause, see, Dean, he likes you, sure. But … not in the way you want him. I mean … maybe it's kind of a – as a little sister. But romance? That's just out of the question. He kinda thinks you're a school girl, you know_, Sam-possessed-by-Meg had told her.

She bit the corner of her lip as she looked over at the youngest Winchester, still by the jukebox. She'd meant to ask Sam if that'd been his opinion, or the demon's.

* * *

It was ten when she finished her shift, the bar filled but quieter, more hunters sitting at the tables, working on their notes or talking in low, uneavesdroppable tones to each other. Hanging up her apron at the back of the bar, she looked in the flyspecked mirror and tugged a little at the hem of her top, the scooped neck dropping accordingly, showing a little more cleavage. The front door opened and she turned, catching sight of Dean looking around to see who'd come in, her gaze following his.

Ellie Morgan.

Jo had met the hunter a few times, when Ellie'd come in to talk to her mother or to Ash. Quiet, serious and as self-possessed as a cat, Ellie was cordial rather than friendly, she'd thought on each of those occasions, cold and uninvolved with anyone except Ellen and the bar's eccentric stray.

There weren't many women in the hunting life and she'd briefly wondered if Ellie would take her on as a partner after her partner had been killed. She hadn't met Furente, had been at school, the freak with the knife collection, when the two had infrequently stopped by the roadhouse, sharing information mostly. Her mother had kyboshed the idea in thirty seconds flat, telling her that Ellie hunted alone and it was best to leave it that way. She'd said much the same thing about Gordon Walker, Jo remembered. And about the Winchesters.

Opening the hatch and stepping out from behind the bar, she stopped, seeing Dean get up from his chair, walk straight to the slender redhead, ducking his head close to her to listen to what she was saying. She couldn't remember seeing him do that for anyone else. Her eyes narrowed consideringly as she watched him follow Ellie, the pair crossing the room and walking around the pool table to Ash's back office. Ellie knocked on the door, turning to say something else to Dean, and Jo saw him shake his head, his hand waving in a vague gesture toward the bar.

"Hey, Jo," Sam said quietly from behind her and she started, head snapping around to look at him.

"Sam," she answered shortly. Sam's gaze shifted behind her and she looked back to see Ash's door open, Ash rubbing a hand over his face as he peered at the two standing outside it. He stepped back, opening the door wider and Ellie followed him inside, leaving Dean standing alone as it closed behind her. Jo frowned as she watched him stare at it for a long moment before he turned around and headed back to the bar.

"That Ellie?" Sam asked, sitting on a vacant stool and leaning on the bar as his brother walked up. "What's she doing here?"

Dean looked at him, nodding, his eyes sliding to Jo briefly and cutting back. His tone was distinctly casual as he responded, "Said she had something for Ash."

He took the stool on the other side of Jo, glancing at his watch and staring vaguely toward the shelves of bottles that lined the back wall of the bar.

Jo leaned a little closer, her shoulder brushing his. "Still feel like that game?"

He turned to face her, and she saw his gaze cut past her to the door on the other side of the room, flicking back almost immediately. "Sure."

Walking to the table, Jo wondered if he'd even remembered the earlier offer. Most of the guys who came into the roadhouse were wide-eyed and ready to try their best lines on her as soon as they saw her. Of course Dean had to be the exception, she thought. Neither of them had mentioned what her mother had told her, the afternoon they'd gotten back from ghost hunt. Even Ellen hadn't mentioned it again, her mother trying to evade a more detailed conversation about her father's death ever since. That outburst had hurt him as much as the revelation had hurt her, she knew. She didn't know how to apologise for it, or even if she should. It still hurt.

She picked up the rack and released the balls, retrieving them from wide slot at the end of the table and setting them up. Dean was still at the bar, talking to Sam. The music from the jukebox was just loud enough so that she couldn't hear what they saying, and Dean's back was to her, but she could see that Sam was slightly agitated about something.

The older Winchester shrugged at his brother and got up, turning and walking to the pool table. He chose a cue and smiled at her, his expression clearly indicating that he considered the game a friendly waste of time. She smiled back, hiding her annoyance at his built-in arrogance.

"Want to make it interesting?"

He glanced at the table and shrugged. "Sure. How much?"

"Fifty?" Jo pulled the note from the role of tips in her pocket and laid it on the table. He looked at it for a moment and pulled his wallet out, peeling off another fifty and putting it on top.

"You can break," he told her, returning the creased leather billfold to the back pocket of his jeans.

Jo picked up her cue and walked around to set the white ball, glancing sideways as Sam brought three beers to the table closest and set them down. From the corner of her eye, Jo could see her mother watching them as she polished glasses behind the counter.

She bent over the table, her attention split between lining up the ball and the awareness that she finally had Dean's attention as he stood at the other of the table and got a good view of the shadowed cleft between her breasts, framed by the low scooped neck of her top. She drew back and hit the ball, watching it crack into the grouping of coloured balls at the other end, sinking two of the smalls.

Looking up, she saw Dean smiling slightly as he picked up his cue and walked around the table to line up the larges.

They played a slow game, drinking their beers and talking occasionally to Sam, for ten minutes before the door to Ash's room opened again. Jo watched as both Sam and Dean stopped what they were doing and turned to look.

Standing next to Ash, the computer genius' arm around her shoulders as he planted a kiss on her cheek, the redhead was only a couple of inches taller than she was, Jo realised. And the same age. Her mother had let that slip after Ellie had been there last time. Glancing back at Dean, she saw his brows draw together at the sight and felt a flash of irritation at him.

Ellie was smiling patiently and nodding at whatever Ash was saying softly next to her ear, when Jo's gaze returned to them. She nodded, slinging her bulky bag onto one shoulder and threading her way through the tables to the bar without looking at either Dean or Sam. The smile had vanished and Jo thought she looked almost worried as she took a stool at the end of the bar and spoke quietly to her mother.

The brothers exchanged another of the lightning-fast glances that seemed half-telepathic, and Dean put down his beer, walking to the side of the table and lining up and sinking two balls in quick succession as Sam finished his beer and left the table to walk to the bar.

Walking around the end of the pool table, his expression no longer friendly or relaxed, Dean sank two more balls fast, his last two, the sharp cracks of the white hitting the others followed by the heavy clunks as they fell into the pockets. The last shot left the white ball in a direct line with the black and the corner pocket, and Jo realised she'd managed to hustle herself as he leaned over, his concentration fierce, lining up the black ball and sinking it with a sharp click and a decisive clunk into the pocket. He straightened up and walked unhurriedly around the table, putting the cue back on the stand, taking the money from the table's edge and picking up his beer. He gave her a somewhat apologetic smile as he noticed her staring at him.

The smile turned her stomach over and she found it hard to raise a smile in return.

"You want your money back?" he asked, picking up her bottle and handing it to her as she walked around the table and back to the table. She took it and shook her head.

"No. I'll know better next time," she said, swallowing a mouthful. His gaze shifted to the bar and she realised that not being able to read the expression on his face as he watched them was even more irritating than his more obvious feelings earlier.

"You two working with Ellie now?"

He turned back to her and shrugged. "Sometimes."

"I thought you worked alone, family thing," she pressed harder, trying to keep her voice light.

"Mostly we do," he agreed noncommittally, throwing another fast glance at the bar.

"Thanks for the game." He finished his beer and set the bottle on the table, turning away. Jo watched him walk to the bar and stop between Ellie and Sam when he reached it. He stretched out an arm behind Ellie as he joined their conversation, leaning against the bar. Whatever they were talking about, their voices were pitched too low to overhear, Jo realised with disappointment.

* * *

"What'd Ash say?" Dean asked as he propped himself on one arm, leaning against the bar and looking from Sam to Ellie.

"He said that he won't have the full data set correlated for at least another two weeks," Ellie told him, picking up her glass and sipping at the whiskey. "But the signs are there, the demon is back on this plane, somewhere."

"What good does it do us? We don't have a way to kill it," Dean said irritably.

"There might be a way," Ellie said, sliding off the stool and picking up her glass. "I haven't been able to get hold of all the ingredients yet, but there's a ritual that can locate lost objects, anywhere."

She took a step toward him and he backed up to let her past. Sam's forehead creased up questioningly at him as he got up and Dean shrugged, looking down the bar for Ellen. Beer wasn't going to cut it for this conversation, he thought, seeing his brother follow Ellie to the booth across the room in the periphery of his vision.

"What's going on?" Ellen asked as she walked over to him, catching his look at the bottles behind her and reaching for a glass.

"Maybe nothing," Dean told her, watching her pour the whiskey. "Ash might've found something concrete."

Ellen nodded, adding a second shot to his glass. "Ellie got something for you?"

His attention shifted back to the woman with his brother. Ellie slid onto the bench seat, her over-sized backpack on the seat beside her as she pulled out a file and opened it.

"She thinks so."

"Dean, we're all friends here, right?" Ellen leaned on the bar toward him. "This isn't just your fight."

He looked back at her and picked up his glass. "Thought you didn't trust us enough to work with, Ellen."

She looked away, her hair swinging forward to hide her face. "I was afraid for Jo, you know that. I still am."

He'd read Jim Murphy's journal at Bobby's place, after Ellie had told him to look it up. The priest had written down the account his father had given him about the gate in Pasadena. For a moment, Dean wondered if he should tell Ellen about it. Glancing back to the booth on the other wall, he decided against it. There were too many things they had to get done. Past history had waited for a lot of years. It could wait a bit longer.

"When we know something for sure, you'll know about it," he said, hoping that sounded like a commitment, even though he knew it wasn't.

Ellen seemed to know it as well, her expression doubtful as she looked at him. He couldn't promise anything and he turned away, carrying his whiskey over to the booth. Sam and Ellie were both looking at the file on the table and he slid in beside her, setting his glass down as Sam looked up.

"It might work," his brother told him.

* * *

Jo turned around at the light tap on her shoulder, looking at Trip Havers, the young partner of one of the more experienced hunters who frequented the roadhouse.

"You finished waitressing?" Trip asked with a grin. "Can I buy you a drink?"

She looked at him and shrugged inwardly. What else did she have to do? "Dwight not here tonight?"

Trip shook his head. "No, told me cut out and have some fun. We got a lead on a haunting down in Mississippi and we're leaving tomorrow for it."

"What do you want?" He looked down the counter at Ellen. Jo followed his gaze, seeing her mother flick a glance their way and sighing inwardly. Someone had put the Stones' Satisfaction on the jukebox and it seemed entirely too ironic for her.

"Bourbon and Coke," she said, taking a seat at the end of the bar.

He nodded and walked down the counter, stopping in front of Ellen, a couple of feet from the brothers. Her mother served him, glancing at her daughter with a slightly raised brow as she heard the order but pouring out the drinks anyway. Hers would be light on the bourbon, she knew.

Swivelling around slightly as Trip returned and set her drink on the counter, she looked just past his ear as Ellie got up, forcing Dean to step back, and carried her drink to a booth on the other side of the room, Sam following her. Dean was leaning on the bar, talking to her mother.

Picking up her glass, Jo swallowed half in the first long mouthful, noting without surprise that the bourbon was indeed light in her glass. She watched Ellen pour Dean a double, frowning a little as her mother leaned closer to the hunter to say something. Whatever Dean said back, it'd unsettled her, she saw. Not much could do that. He turned away from the bar, and she watched him carry his glass over to the table where Sam and Ellie were now sitting, looking over a file that Ellie had drawn from her bag.

Dean dropped onto the seat next to Ellie, a little closer than was necessary, Jo thought, on the pretext of reading the file in front of her.

She'd asked him, the last time the three of them had been in the roadhouse together, if he was interested in the hunter and he'd looked at her, his expression derisory as he'd denied it. But what he said, she thought now, and the way he acted around her, were two different things.

"You ever get that hunt you were putting together going, Jo?"

She dragged her attention back to the young man in front of her. "What?"

"That job you thought was a case in Pennsylvania?" Trip clarified.

She shook her head. "No, not yet."

"We could do it together if you're mom's okay with it," he suggested, glancing at the formidable woman standing behind the bar.

"Yeah, I'll check," she said absently, turning a little more so that she could look over his shoulder at the booth. Dean's arm was resting along the back of the seat, and he leaned closer to the redhead, a paper held in the other hand.

What was it about him, she wondered unhappily. He was attractive, in a rough and careless kind of way, but that usually didn't set her off this way. There was a deep sadness in him, a wide streak of protectiveness, both of which she found unendurably attractive. He'd told her a while ago that normally he'd have hit on her so fast her head would've been spinning, if it hadn't been for the series of events that had dogged them in the last few months, but that'd been nearly four months ago, and he still hadn't, and looking at him now she didn't think that it had anything to do with what was going on in his life anymore.

She watched as Ellie turned her head to look at him and for a moment the two of them were still, Dean looking down slightly into her eyes, Ellie looking up at him and neither moving. Then Ellie turned away and she saw Dean's eyelids close for a second before he opened them and looked back down at the file.

What had that been, she wondered?

* * *

"What about Bobby?" Sam asked, looking up from the list in the file at Ellie.

She nodded. "He's looking but some of this stuff isn't available in this country, and he says he's too old to deal with jet lag," she told him dryly. "I've got a flight out tomorrow evening."

"Wait a minute," Dean said, trying to force his attention back on the requirements of the ritual, instead of wondering what the hell had just happened. "Even if this works, if we get all this stuff, and Ash comes up with a location, we're not thinking this thing is just going to sit still for us to put it all together and kill it, right? We still don't even know what it wants."

Sam looked up from the file, his eyes flint-hard. "It took Ava, Dean. It killed Mom and Jess and it's done something to god-knows how many kids. Whatever it wants, if we can find the Colt, we can kill it and that puts an end to it, for good."

Dean closed his teeth on the retort that rose; that he'd fired at it and he hadn't been able to kill it. He didn't want to have that argument again in front of anyone else.

* * *

Watching the booth obliquely through the tarnished mirror behind the bar, Jo saw Ellie gathering up the papers and putting them into the file, closing it and passing it to Sam. The hunter nodded at Dean, getting to her feet. He got up and moved out of her way and Jo's attention sharpened as his hand closed around the woman's slim wrist as she passed him, ducking his head to say something to her without letting go. Ellie shrugged slightly, and he released her, and the redhead turned away, raising a hand to Ellen and smiling briefly in her direction as she headed for the front door.

Her gaze flicking back to the brothers, Jo watched Dean sit down again, leaning across the table to say something to Sam.

"Well, thanks for the drink," she said to Trip, getting up.

"It's early –"

She smiled thinly. "Not for me, my boss is a hard-ass," she told him, her smile only half-joking. "See you around."

Walking out through the door beside the bar, she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, wondering if there was any point to the pretence. From her window, she watched Trip head out to his car, driving out of the gravelled lot and turning south. She sat in the dark and waited to hear the growl of the Impala's engine, pretty sure the brothers would be heading back into town. It was another missed opportunity, she thought morosely to herself, but it was hard to find a time and a place where she could talk to him alone.

After half an hour of listening, she came back down the stairs, glancing around at the couple of hunters who were still there, working on their cases or just going through the papers her mother ordered from the cities across the country. She walked slowly over to the booth where Dean was sitting alone, the open file still in front of him.

He looked up as she stopped beside him.

"What's that?" she asked, looking at the file, not knowing what else to say. He followed her gaze and shuffled the papers back inside the file, closing it.

"Job."

She sat down on the bench seat opposite him, propping her chin on one hand. Dean gave her a quizzical glance, picking up his glass. There was barely a mouthful left in it.

"You know, Ellie's the same age as me," she said. He looked at her, one dark brow lifting.

"And that would be important – why?"

Jo sighed, leaning back. "I just think it's interesting that you don't tell her to go back to school, do something else, don't treat her like a kid."

His expression seemed to be somewhere between disbelief and bemusement. "She's got experience."

"And how'd she get that, huh? She went out and did it," Jo said exasperatedly.

"She trained with someone else for two years when she did," he corrected her, a little impatiently, the humour gone from his face. "Someone good."

"And got him killed," Jo muttered under her breath, looking away from him. He heard it anyway, leaning forward across the table and staring at her.

"How do you know that?"

"Everyone knows what happened to Michael Furente," she told him acerbically. "Demon took him because he gave himself up for her."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "Who told you that, Jo?"

She shrugged, looking away again, her expression stubborn. "Mom. Ellie was in here, a few months after it happened. She told Mom."

"And she told you?" he asked softly. "And you tell everyone else? Whether it's their business or not? You are a kid."

She straightened up, offended. "I'm not and I'm not the keeper of everyone else's secrets. If she didn't want it known, she should have kept it to herself."

The look of disbelief he gave her was cold, and in that moment, Jo recognised that she'd just blown whatever chance she might've had at gaining his trust.

He got to his feet, picking up the file with a dismissive shrug. "Yeah. Whatever."

* * *

_**April 10, 2007. Richmond, Virginia**_

The circle drawn on the broad, wooden boards of the church's floor was large, candles flicking at each of the cardinal points and the smell of the burned herbs and powders thick in the air.

"What's it mean?" Sam looked down at the untouched map in the centre. "It didn't work?"

Ellie shook her head. "It worked," she said, her voice neutral. "The gun's not here, not on this plane. Or it's warded."

"So, it didn't work," Dean said sardonically, turning away from the circle and walking to the door. He wasn't sure if he was disappointed or not. The whole plan had worried him, even getting the Colt back. He didn't think they were ready to take on a demon that powerful. His brother was as reckless as his father when it came to Yellow-Eyes.

"I'm sorry," Ellie said, looking up at him.

He glanced back to her and shook his head. "It was worth a shot," he admitted tiredly. With the Colt and the one bullet left, he might've been able to kill it. Without it, there was no chance at all.

"What now?" Sam asked, getting to his feet.

"Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to get out of sight for a while," Dean said, looking out through the door at the ordinary suburban street beyond it. "Let the APBs gather some dust after Folsom."

"What?! No, we keep looking," Sam blurted out, looking from his brother to the woman kneeling on the other side of the circle.

Ellie gathered up the candles, in the reverse order of how she'd set them up. She glanced up at him. "He might be right," she told Sam, getting to her feet. "Aside from the odds being good for running into some cop who knows your faces, you know what happened to Andy."

"No," Sam ground out. "We _don't_ know what happened to Andy. Just that he's disappeared. Like Ava," he added pointedly, looking at his brother.

"You're in such a damned rush to risk your life, Sammy?" Dean snapped at him, turning back from the door.

Sam scowled at him. "I want this to be over!"

"So do I, but I told you, it's not worth dying for," Dean said, his voice deepening.

"I disagree," Sam said coolly.

Dean stared at him for a long moment then turned abruptly and left the church.

Sam turned and looked down at Ellie, dropping to one knee and helping to pack away the map and the emptied bowls. "Ever since Dad … he won't listen to me, doesn't even to pretend to listen anymore."

Ellie reached into the bag for a bottle of water, dampening a cloth and starting to wipe the spell circle from the floor.

"He'd rather die than lose you," she said matter-of-factly.

Sam sank back on his heels, watching her clean, his breath running out noisily. "Did he tell you what Dad told him? About me?"

She nodded, glancing at him.

"We don't even know what it means, Ellie," Sam said, his voice hard with frustration. "And Dean can't, he won't do it. So one of us has to be stronger."

"He won't do it unless he has concrete proof because he loves you, Sam, and he needs his family," she said, straightening as she stopped wiping and looked up at him. "You said it yourself, you don't know what it means. Meg found a way in and he knew it wasn't you. Don't you think he'll know the difference again?"

Sam didn't respond and Ellie looked back at the floor, dampening the cloth and wiping the last traces of the circle from the boards.

* * *

"Are you going back to the roadhouse?" Dean asked her as she locked the church door and came down the steps.

She shook her head, opening the truck door and throwing her bag inside. "No, there's a woman I know who's in the country at the moment," she told him, glancing at his brother. Sam was leaning against the Impala, his arms folded tightly over his chest, staring at the ground.

"She specialises in getting hold of hard-to-find information and artefacts and she said she had some information that might be relevant to the demon," she continued. "If she does, I'll leave it with Ash, or see you there."

He nodded, looking down the street, his expression pensive. "We'll be there," he said. "We have to keep our heads down now anyway."

* * *

_**April 18, 2007. San Francisco, California**_

The stone-paved balcony overlooked the Bay, a capricious breeze fluttering the edges of the large umbrella shading the elegantly set table by the balustrade and blowing the last traces of the morning fog away, revealing a panoramic view of sea and sky.

"I hear you've been helping the Winchester brothers."

Ellie turned away from the view to look at the woman sitting opposite her. The English woman was immaculately and expensively dressed, her honey-blonde hair loose, tendrils lifting in the light breeze and framing a speculative expression.

"I thought you decided that getting involved in hunter business was beneath you," Ellie countered mildly, picking up her wine glass. "Too much emotion, wasn't it?"

The woman smiled. "Well, certainly some of them. I keep my contacts, Ellie, you know that."

She did know it. Bela's contacts were world-wide and she heard everything, using the information to further her ambitions. For all that she was amoral, scheming and usually playing several angles on any single situation, she was a good business contact, her reputation upheld by a rigid adherence to keeping her word once a deal had been struck.

"What did the document say?" she asked, bypassing the question. "And how did you authenticate it?"

"The authentication came with the delivery," Bela said, the smile fading slowly. "I trust it." She picked up her glass and leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs as she looked at Ellie over the rim.

"As for what it says, well, I can tell you it's interesting, fascinating, even," she said. "Particularly so, in light of your recent associations. More than that will cost you."

"How much?"

"A quarter-million, in sterling," Bela told her. "There are several other interested parties."

Ellie grimaced inwardly as she kept her face expressionless. It was possible, but it would take a couple of days.

"The usual account?" she asked and Bela laughed.

"I do like doing business with you, you're so utterly prosaic about it," she said. "And yeah, the usual account will be fine."

"It'll take me a couple of days to move that," Ellie told her. "And I'm going to want more than your assurance that the document's worth it before I make the transfer."

"I'm aware," she said, reaching for the large satchel on the chair beside her. "You have no idea of how difficult it was to get it translated."

Ellie refrained from telling her that she had a very good idea of how difficult it would've been. There were only three people she knew of who could make a translation like that, and they all would've charged the earth for the job.

The single sheet of paper Bela withdrew and passed across the table was dense with printed text, and Ellie put down her glass as she took it, skimming over the contents first, then going back to the top and reading it through. Her heart was hammering against her ribs when she'd finished and she kept her gaze on the page until she was sure that none of the shock that was filling her would show on her face.

"How do you want to manage delivery?"

"Safe deposit box," Bela said, holding her hand out. Ellie passed the paper back and nodded.

"The key will be at the bank as soon as the funds have been verified." Bela held out her hand and Ellie shook it.

"As always, a pleasure," Bela said, getting to her feet. "I have a flight in two hours, so I hope you won't mind me cutting this short."

"The funds will be in the account by Friday," Ellie said, repressing her impatience for the other woman to leave. There was a flight to Rome at six, she thought she could just make it.

"Splendid," Bela said, picking up her bag and turning away. "Ciao."

Ellie watched her walk off the restaurant's patio and inside and pulled out her cell, her thoughts chaotic as she tried to prioritise everything she was going to have to do in the next two days.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

* * *

_**April 30, 2007, Cold Oak, South Dakota**_

Sam looked down at Jake, the iron bar held up for a final, fatal swing.

_Did he want to be Yellow-Eyes' bitch? _

The thought intruded suddenly. _No_. There had been enough killing.

He dropped the bar and started to walk away, following the road.

"Sam!?"

He heard his brother's voice in the distance. "Dean?"

Walking faster, he held his dislocated shoulder tightly against his chest to stop it moving, tears springing to his eyes from a combination of pain and relief. It was over, he thought, a little incoherently, uncertain of what he meant by it. He'd won and it was over.

* * *

The air moved next to Jake's unconscious body, fluttering the collar of his shirt as the angel materialised on the dark, dirt road. Uriel looked down at the young man, sprawled bonelessly at his feet.

"Come on, no time to sleep, don't want Sam Winchester to gain the protection of his brother now, do we?" He leaned down and touched Jake lightly on the temple. Jake shuddered, consciousness returning immediately. He sat up, looking around, scrabbling backward across the dirt as he saw the man standing next to him.

"Who the hell are you?"

"I'm here to show you the way," Uriel told him dryly, bending to pick up the rusty-bladed knife that lay on the ground between them.

"What?"

"You're not going to let Sam Winchester get away with that, are you? Being the best of the best? Beating you and getting all the riches of the world?"

Jake rolled onto his knees and staggered to his feet. "What?" he said again, his gaze swinging wildly around the dark area. Sam had beaten him, he remembered suddenly. He thought of the man in his dreams, blazing yellow eyes and a sarcastic Southern drawl. His family. His mother.

Uriel stepped close to him, holding out the knife. "Go. Kill him. Then you'll be the top dog again."

Jake turned around, his eyes narrowing as he saw Sam walking away, a little less than a hundred yards down the gravelled road. He turned back to the man, but there was no one there. Looking down at the pitted blade in his hand, a shiver threaded up his spine.

He turned back to the road and started to run toward Sam, the knife hilt clenched in his hand.

* * *

_**May 8th 2007. Kraków, Poland**_

Ellie shivered slightly in the cold chapel, pulling her coat more closely around her as she huddled on the wooden pew. Spring was late to the Polish city and slush still filled the streets, dirty and clinging to shoes and hems, adding a damp chill to the thin winds that blew down the narrow streets in the oldest part of the city.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting," the abbot said, lowering his voice as he crossed the chapel and saw the numbers of tourists who'd turned on his entrance. He stopped in front of her, making a small gesture to the door to one side of the altar. "We can go this way."

Nodding, Ellie got to her feet and followed him out. "You said that this one was presenting particular difficulty?"

The abbot glanced back at her. "We cannot force it out," he said, his expression worried. "It's been three weeks and the girl is dying."

They reached a thick, wooden door, the timbers black with age and the abbot fumbled at his waist for the keys. "Never have I seen the servants of the Adversary so prevalent among us."

"How many in the city?"

"The girl makes eight, in the last few months," he told her, fitting an old-fashioned iron key into the lock and turning it. "Four of those were within the last week."

She bit her lip as she passed through the doorway, stopping and waiting on the other side as he drew the door shut behind them and locked it again. Something major had happened last week. She hadn't been able to reach Sam, his phone had been out of service and the roadhouse number had been a disconnect. Bobby hadn't been answering either.

Her first stop in Rome had been a bust, the man she'd hoped to see had been out of the country and his superiors hadn't known – or wanted to tell her – when he'd be returning. She'd wasted three weeks trying to find another contact with the same level of experience as Patrick, only to find he'd been killed a month before.

"The steps are narrow," the abbot warned her as he took a lantern from the shelf next to the winding stone stairs that descended below the church.

At the bottom of the stairs, the catacombs were ice-cold but dry, and they followed the line of lit torches along the widest of the tunnels, their shadows leaping with the draught of air that made the flames jump.

"Apostate whore!"

The scream was shrill, drilling into their ears as they entered the round stone chamber. In the trap in the middle, the possessed girl stalked back and forth across the enclosing circle. No more than ten, Ellie thought, carefully shutting her reactions away. The child's clothes had been rent and shredded and were edged with blood, the red covering her fingers and nails testifying mutely to the savagery of the demon inside her. She was missing hair, parts of her scalp looked like the hair had been torn free, and some of the scratches on her face were still bleeding freely while others seemed to have scabbed over.

"Not what you'd call all that accurate, this one."

The man's voice was dry and the accent was pure Bethnal Green. Ellie turned to see him step out of the shadows on one side of the chamber, recognising voice and man with a wide, delighted grin.

"Goddamn you, Patrick I've been looking for you for the last three weeks," she said, walking to him as he opened his arms and grinned back. "Would it kill you to return a call?"

"Took your time gettin' 'ere," he said, hugging her tightly then stepping back to look down at her. "Thought the clues I left in Istanbul would've been better than a roadmap. An' you know I don't like those damned phones."

"Perhaps I'm slipping?" she suggested, making a face at him. "I couldn't find John either."

His amusement vanished and he shook his head. "No, I don' know where 'e's gone to ground but no one's seen or 'eard from 'im."

"What's going on?" she asked, turning to look at the demon.

"Not a 'unnred percent sure," Patrick said, turning to pick up a bottle of holy water from the table against the wall. "Fourteen exorcisms in the last two weeks, an' the consensus is that a gate was opened, somewhere in the US."

Ellie hadn't heard that and she turned to look at him disbelievingly. "What?"

He gave her a rueful smile. "You 'eard me right." He gestured to the demon. "Since you're 'ere, let's get down to it, right?"

She nodded, glancing at the abbot who'd retreated to the opposite wall. "If you stay, you must pray. Keep your eyes shut, and pray to guard your mind."

The abbot nodded and turned to the wall, his shoulders hunching over as his fingers plucked at the rosary at his waist.

"_Ego servus Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, et per quem omnia, qui omnia creavit. Et in nomine omnipotentis Dei, et dijudicabo Adiuro vos. Quae tibi nomen est?_" Ellie said, beginning to walk slowly around the trap.

"'Ow'd you get free of the pits of 'ell, then?" Patrick asked, circling the trap counter-clockwise as Ellie moved more slowly around it clockwise.

"Pestilent whore's son, filthy maggot-eating –"

"Now, now, keep a civil tongue in your 'ead," Patrick said mildly, flicking the flask in his hand into the circle.

"No! It burns! It burns, it burns – the GIRL!"

"Not even goin' to leave a mark on 'er." Patrick shook his head at the demon. "'Ow'd you get out, 'ellspawn?"

The demon threw itself backward onto the stone floor, the girl's head cracking as it hit with force.

"Come and fuck me, churchman," it crooned, rolling over and dragging the remnants of the dress up to its neck. "Fuck me and I'll tell you everything. The girl is dying for your fat, hard cock in her."

"_Ego servus Dei omnipotentis, Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti, qui omnia creavit omnia. In nomine obligo vobis et vos volo quaestionem. Quod est nomen?"__ Ellie asked again, her voice deepening. "You are bound, demon; by the power of God, by the power of the circle; you are bound. What is your name?"_

"Arestito."

Ellie felt Patrick's glance on her, seeing the slight shake of his head from the corner of her eye.

"What is your name?"

"Mesphistopheles."

"What is your name?"

"Patrick."

The church hunter threw another spray of holy water over the demon and steam rose from the blackening skin, burning where each droplet landed. It ran, screaming, and hit the wall of the trap, falling backward to the floor.

"What is your name?"

"Godek Kobylanski," the demon said, blood running from the vessel's nose and mouth. "My name."

"By your name, Godek, by the name you were baptised with an' made one with God, I command you," Patrick said, stepping close to the circle as Ellie stopped opposite him on the other side. "By your name and your contract with the Almighty, you will answer."

The demon's eyes opened wide then blinked. The pale blue of the girl's irises stared at them.

"'Ow'd you get free of 'ell?" Patrick asked again.

The demon slumped in the centre of the circle. "The gate opened and I flew out with thousands, flew into the world and came back here."

"Where was the gate?"

"I don't know."

"'Ow many demons escaped through that gate?" he asked.

"We are legion," the demon said, looking back up at him, eyes flashing to black again. "We are uncounted and uncountable and nothing will stop us this time."

* * *

Patrick laid his hand against the forehead of the little girl and looked around at the abbot, nodding.

"She's alive," he said, wrapping a blanket around the girl and lifting her from the floor. "She needs a doctor."

The abbot bowed and hurried to him, taking the girl and carrying her out of the chamber and along the tunnel.

Ellie washed the girl's blood from the circle, looking up at Patrick as the sounds of the monk's footsteps faded away.

"Thousands?"

"Demons do like to exaggerate a smidgin'," he said, extending his hand to her. She took it and let him pull her to her feet. "A lot of 'em by the sounds of it, an' we're seeing that anyway." He packed the bowls back into the long, black canvas bag and pulled out a hip flask, unscrewing the lid and tipping the contents into his mouth.

"The document you got from Talbot," he said, when he'd swallowed, his eyes half-closed as he handed the flask to her. "What'd it say?"

"The power of the Seals will be broken by a prophecy of Hell, that an army will rise from the deepest levels and take over the world," she told him, swallowing a small mouthful and handing it back to him. "The usual, except that it mentioned one thing I can't work out."

"An' that is?"

"That Heaven would reach out its hand and help Hell to rise," Ellie told him, feeling a chill slip through her.

"'eaven's got its 'ands full tryin' to keep the bloody archs under control, I'd've thought," Patrick grumbled, screwing the lid back on and shoving the flask into his coat pocket. "'Ardly needs to add to the troubles."

"I double-checked the authentication with Yure and Kasha, it's the real deal," she said. "So, presumably is the prophecy."

"What was the wording?"

"_And it is written that the First Seal shall be broken when a Righteous man sheds blood in hell. As he breaks, so shall it break_," Ellie said, reciting from memory. "_For Heaven will reach down as Hell reaches up and the Righteous man who begins it will be the only one who can end it_."

Patrick snorted. "Good luck to 'em with that."

"Someone down there believes in it," she said, an edge to her voice. "Someone thinks they're going to break Lucifer out."

"Opening a gate is nothin' compared to openin' the Cage, Ellie," the church hunter told her. "You know that. It would take more planning ability than 'ell – or Lucifer – ever 'ad to manage it."

"Patrick, all it would take would be the help of the archs – not even all of them, just one or two."

His expression sobered as he considered that. "The seraphs aren't talking to anyone at the moment."

She shook her head. "And why do you think that is?"

* * *

_**May 22**__**nd**__** 2007. Cicero, Indiana.**_

_So, yeah, you can relax._

That was the problem, Dean thought uncomfortably. He couldn't. Relax.

Nothing could've shown him more clearly and painfully what the deal he'd made meant than looking at the boy that could've been his - wasn't - but could've been and knowing that would never happen.

_You're welcome to stay._

He groaned under his breath, tipping his head back against the seat and closing his eyes, wiping a hand over his face at the way that casual invitation bit through him again.

Seeing her again, seeing the kid – Ben – it'd done something and he didn't want to look too closely at what that something was. He had no future. He had nothing but a few months to kill whatever evil he could find, try and convince his brother to quit again and go back to school, to a real life, and then face up to the choice he'd made with whatever courage he could summon.

_And if you hadn't been facing a short road to Hell_, the voice in his head asked. _What then? Would you have stayed? Been a part of a family? Told her all about your life, what you've done, seen, felt?_

Opening his eyes, he stared unseeingly through the windshield of the car at the empty parking lot on the side of the kids' park.

_I've got a lot of work to do, _he'd told her. And …_ it isn't my life._

Neither had been untrue. They hadn't opened the gate but they'd been a part of it and it fell on them to undo what'd been done.

_Dean, don't tell me that it's not my fault!_ Sam had yelled at him in the room in Oak Park after Bobby had left and they'd been on their own again. _Don't tell me it's not on me! I could've killed him. Stopped it all. I didn't!_

He shook his head at the memory, shunting it aside. It wasn't Sam's fault, but it was their responsibility. And even if his life hadn't had a time-limit on it, he couldn't imagine trying to tell Lisa what he'd done, who he was. He couldn't imagine her hearing it and wanting anything to do with him.

He'd spent two days with her, back in the fall of '98. They hadn't spent much of that time talking. Hell, he hadn't even left her his number, or called or even thought of her until he'd seen that news report on the dad who'd fallen on his power saw and remembered that she'd lived in Cicero. He checked the phone book and the name was still there, a different address but still the only L. Braeden in the book.

When she'd opened the door, he'd been nervous. Her distraction, the kid's party, the weirdness of standing in suburbia and wondering if Ben was his, that'd all added to that initial discomfort, made it a helluva worse … but, he acknowledged honestly to himself, she'd made him nervous by being … normal. He could remember every second of what they'd done together in her loft. He couldn't remember a single fucking detail of what had happened in between.

"_Where the fuck are they?" He'd looked around the darkened space in frustration._

The memory came back to him, clear and intact, and he closed his eyes, seeing again the interior of the barn, feeling the worry he'd had that Bobby and Sam hadn't turned up, his faint irritation with the calmness of the woman seated beside him in the black car. Bobby'd called Ellie when he'd realised that they were hunting a minotaur, the creature yet another variation on the shape shifting types. It'd been living in the caves in the area, taking women and children and only a woman could act as bait, Bobby had told them.

_Ellie had turned to look at him, shifting back into the corner between the door and the seat in the car. "Dean."_

_He'd glanced at her and she'd smiled at him, and he'd felt a little thread of the tension that'd been filling him unravel slightly._

"_Relax. What's your favourite Zep song?" she'd asked him, tilting her head slightly, a stray beam of light catching in her hair._

_He'd stared at her impatiently. "It's a tie. Ramble On and Travellin' Riverside Blues."_

_She'd nodded. "Why?"_

"_I don't know," he'd said, exasperated by the conversation, looking out through the windshield at the dim shapes visible in the barn's interior._

"_You're wasting energy, you know," she'd told him softly and he'd looked back at her, one brow lifting sardonically at her. _

"_All this frustration and tension – you need to let it go, think about something else for a while."_

"_Not one of my strong points," he'd pointed out astringently. _

"_I noticed," she'd said with a slight grin. "But you need to make it a strength. By the time this happens, you'll be tied in knots if you don't let it go."_

_He remembered the feel of the tension in his back and shoulders, down his neck and across his chest as she'd said it. He'd been burning up energy like a fucking defective reactor. He'd taken a deep breath, feeling it loosen the muscles across his shoulders and chest and had finally seen the sense of what she'd been trying to tell him._

"_Alright, how do you do it?" he'd asked, shifting in the seat to face her._

"_Don't think about it. I think about other things, non-related things."_

_Her hair had been bound back into the long braid, her face clean of makeup. She'd been wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved, black top over black jeans, a short black jacket over that. He remembered thinking that she wasn't pretty, exactly, her colouring too vivid, her features unconventional, but she was beautiful._

He shifted uneasily against the Impala's seat as that thought returned to him.

"_I usually relax in one kind of way," he'd told her, grinning suggestively._

_She'd snorted, not offended or even surprised, he'd thought. Knowing him._

"_Well, try others."_

It'd been the third or fourth time he and his brother had hunted with her, and talking to her had been easy. By the time Bobby and Sam had pulled up in the old man's tow truck out the front of the barn, the tension had gone and he'd been ready, his mind clear and his body humming with energy.

The conclusion was there, just at the edge of his thoughts but he didn't look at it, didn't let get any nearer. He was on a one-way ticket and there was no getting out it. Even if, by some miracle, he could find a way, he couldn't use it. The deal had been clear.

* * *

_**June 26th 2007. Idrija, Slovenia.**_

Ellie stood near the centre of the stone crypt, watching the demon held in the trap from the corner of her eye. The tall, lanky vessel paced around the narrow confines of the circle, eyes black from corner to corner, the last few pimples of the boy's hormonal fluctuations glaringly red against the stark, white pallor of his face.

The crypt been built several hundred years ago, like the church whose ruins stood above it. It had been hallowed ground for over a millennium though, chosen for its power. Under her feet, there was a node in the lines, a place where power could be drawn from the endlessly cycling energy sources of the planet, focussing and amplifying the effects of all rituals performed on the stone-flagged floor. Many of the churches and places of worship around the planet had been built over such sources of power, unconsciously felt to be holy or fae.

The demon standing in front of her knew it as well. On the floor, the devil's trap devised by medieval demonologists and recorded in the Key of Solomon, had been drawn in lamb's blood. Above the demon, a much earlier Hebraic demon trap was painted onto the crypt's low ceiling, in the blood of a goat. The demon in his vessel was trapped between the two.

Each trap had a separate function: Solomon's trap was merely a holding device, designed to keep a demon from being able to escape or create havoc as it was exorcised - or bound and commanded. The Hebraic trap however, had been designed to trap the bodiless form of the demon within the spiralling maze of the ancient symbols that angelkind had once shared with humanity, and destroy the demon's essence as it reached the centre.

She'd left Patrick in Poland, following a lead to a demon hive in northern Russia that had already been abandoned and left empty of everything but the bones of their victims when she'd gotten there. Their path had been clear, spree murders and their mentally ravaged vessels left a news path that led south, almost to the shores of the Adriatic.

The demon had been left behind, to guard a sacred site, it'd said. She doubted it. She thought it'd been left as a diversion. It knew less of the plans of the fallen angel than she did, and nothing of Heaven or what collusion there could be between the two planes that bridged the destinations of the souls living on earth.

Drawing a small leather-bound book from the pocket of her jacket, she felt a brief sensation of comfort in the feel of the crinkled leather cover, the fine rice paper pages under her fingers. It was a book she'd spent painstaking years creating, holding the spells her mentor had known and drummed into her, and those she'd found through other sources, incantations and rituals for binding or releasing, for compelling and commanding, for divination and scrying and dealing with the dead, drawn from every culture and from every time. It was far from finished, she knew, her thumbnail flicking through the pages as she watched the demon. It would take more than her lifetime to accomplish that, but it was the most powerful tool she had.

It fell open to the page she wanted. She took a deep breath and began to read, her thumb absently stroking the silver beads of the rosary in her right hand.

"_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio, infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica.  
Ergo draco maledicte__et omnis legio diabolica adjuramus te. Cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare.__"_

"You can't do this to me," the demon hissed at her from the mouth of the eighteen-year old boy. "You are not sanctified, not one of the chosen."

It thrashed around the confines of the circle, jerking uncontrollably as the exorcism unhooked its hold on the boy it possessed.

"You have no power!" it shouted at her. "No authority from God! You are nothing!"

"_Vade, Satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis. Humiliare sub potenti manu dei, contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto et terribili nomine, quem inferi tremunt_," Ellie read on, tranquilly ignoring the screams and curses. She knew the ritual by heart but that faint comfort of the book in her hands, the words flowing from the pages into her mind, was a steadying influence. A focus.

"NO! You're killing me!" the demon screamed, the volume in the low-ceilinged space deafening. It threw itself against the invisible walls of the trap, uncaring of the physical damage it was doing to its vessel, blood flying from the impacts in fine sprays that seemed to hang in the air then fell with a soft patter, spattering over the stones. "You're _killing_ me! I'll _destroy_ this puling human!"

The threats, the screaming, the violence, it was normal and Ellie repeated the ritual, her voice strengthening with each repetition. It was something she'd learned not to question now. A feeling of power that seemed to seep and then flow into her when the spoken Latin began to exert its force over the hellspawn.

_Symbols and words hold as much power as sword and shield_, Michael had told her once. They'd been in northern Italy at the time, waiting to see a contact. The old castle had been frigidly cold and draughty, and they'd made up their bed in front of a vast hearth, dragging in logs for a fire big enough to warm that limited space in front of the flames, the rest of the hall shadowed and icy.

_They're just made up_, she remembered arguing with him, her attraction to him more mental than physical although she hadn't realised it at the time. _We make them up, they don't have power of their own_.

_They talk to the subconscious_, he'd said reprovingly, _and the subconscious is the key to the soul. Nothing has more power, more creativity than the soul_.

"_Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine. Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire te rogamus, audi nos. Ut inimicos sanctae Ecclesiae humiliare digneris, te rogamus, audi nos._"

"Wait!" the demon shrieked, its voice cracking. "Wait! I can tell you things, I know something, something about the Winchesters, about Dean Winchester – you care about him, I can see it, just fucking well wait!"

Ellie paused, looking at the desperate expression on the vessel's face suspiciously. Demons lied, especially when they were about to be destroyed. She knew that it could see into her mind, into her memories and thoughts. Soul-to-soul communication the demonologies called it, a by-product of the creation of the demon from the human soul, the soul's ability to communicate with other dimensions, other planes of existence, refined and magnified by centuries of unremitting torture.

"He made a deal, with a crossroads demon," the demon said as she waited. "Traded his soul for his brother's life."

"What?" The question burst out involuntarily and Ellie struggled to keep her face expressionless as shock filled her, chilling her from the inside out.

Dean had made a deal? With a demon? Of all the things she could have thought of him doing, that one would never have occurred to her, not after his father. She turned to the demon but kept her face averted. There was nothing to be gained from meeting eyes with a demon, even if you were about to destroy them forever.

"You heard me. It's the truth," the demon said, pressing itself against the invisible wall of the trap. "Sam Winchester was killed, knifed in the back by one of Azazel's psychic kiddies. His brother made a deal to bring him back."

She turned away as memory after memory hit her; his fear and his anger, the despair he'd felt that he'd lived instead of dying. _What's dead should stay dead!_ She could still hear the vehemence in his voice when he'd said it in the dark motel room.

_Sam Winchester was killed_. _Knifed in the back. Meg wanted me to kill him. Heaven reached down when Hell reached up. What in god's name did it all mean?_

_You were doing your job_, she'd said to him, not really knowing where the conviction about that had come from, compelled to say it anyway. Dean's job was protecting his brother. Had everyone known that?

"What was the deal?" Ellie asked curtly, swinging around to face the demon. How much time would she have? Was it even possible to break it?

"His brother alive; one last year on earth before the bill comes due. And no tricks. Dean tries to welsh on the deal and his brother drops dead."

Turning away, she walked across the crypt floor, frantically trying to work out what she needed to do. No matter what'd he said, she thought, half-resignedly, half-angrily, when it'd come down to doing his job and protecting his brother, there hadn't been a choice for him. She swung back to the trap.

"Who holds the contract?"

"You can't expect me to know that." The demon drew back from her, shaking its head and spreading its hands out helplessly. "I'm in the lower end of the pay brackets."

"But you do, don't you?" she said, certain of it.

The silence was her answer. She looked back to the open book in her hands.

"_Terribilis Deus de sanctuario suo. Deus Israhel ipse truderit virtutem et fortitudinem plebi Suae–_"

"It's more than my life's worth to tell you that," the demon moaned. "I'd be flayed for centuries."

"Your call. You've got five seconds to make up your mind," Ellie said matter-of-factly. "Five, four, three …"

"Lilith! Alright? Lilith holds all the contracts! Everyone else just works on commission."

_Lilith, of course_, she thought, her stomach clenching. For a moment she let herself doubt. Then she drew in a deep breath, putting aside that doubt and every other thought. There would be time later, she knew. It was a long flight back home.

"Thanks, you've been very helpful." She opened her eyes, and set her jaw, calling on every particle of her willpower and determination to fiercely wall up her thoughts and feelings; her gaze dropped back to the open pages of the book in her hands.

"_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio, infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica.  
Ergo draco maledicte__et omnis legio diabolica adjuramus te. Cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare.__"_

"What? I told you the truth! You can't send me back!" The demon stared at her, muscles twitching and jumping uncontrollably as the words of the ritual stabbed and gouged and cut at it. The young man began to shudder, eyes rolling back into his head, his skin stretching and bulging as the demon fought for a hold to stay in the body.

Ellie didn't look up. "And I'm glad to hear it, but there's no place on this earth for you."

She continued the ritual, her voice deepening and strengthening with each repeated evocation, her eyes not seeing the words on the page any longer.

The crypt's chambers had strange acoustical properties; the longer she read, the more the words resounded, the sound coming from every direction, a chorus, a choir of voices, echoing against the stone, caught in the blood of the traps and reverberating through the air.

"_Vade, Satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis. Humiliare sub potenti manu dei, contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto et terribili nomine, quem inferi tremunt_. _Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine. Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire te rogamus, audi nos. Ut inimicos sanctae Ecclesiae humiliare digneris, te rogamus, audi nos._"

The demon slumped forward, and the youth rose from the floor, twisting slowly as his body lifted higher, contorting into convulsions as it got closer to the trap on the ceiling.

_"Terribilis Deus de sanctuario suo. Deus Israhel ipse truderit virtutem et fortitudinem plebi Suae. Benedictus deus. Gloria patri."_

With the last word, the mouth gaped open. Charcoal smoke, dense and pungent with the smell of sulphur, poured out, the demon torn from its victim and expelled into the narrowing gap between the body and the trap above it.

Ellie looked up, watching the ribboning essence hesitate, then writhe violently as it felt itself drawn into the spiralling symbols above it. It coiled and twisted around the tightening vortex, emitting a mental shriek that she couldn't hear with her ears but which drilled into the spaces in her skull, vibrating through her bones. The shriek and the smoke disappeared completely when it reached the centre. The boy's body fell abruptly to the floor.

Closing the book, Ellie tucked it into her pocket, walking over to the youth and crouching beside him. Her thoughts were hammering at her behind the wall she'd built and she resisted them, letting her fingertips rest against the side of his neck. A pulse beat slowly there. Thumbing up the eyelids, she pulled a small penlight from her coat, flicking the light over his open eye, forcing herself to repeat the action with the other eye, to maintain her concentration on what she was doing. Both pupils had contracted sharply as the light hit them.

She rocked back on her heels, one part of her mind considering what to do about the boy next to her, another going back over what the demon had said.

Dean had made a deal. There'd been no choice for him. Not the way he felt about himself, about his brother, about his life. She had less than a year.

_Don't waste time feeling sorry for yourself or for him_, she told herself severely. _Just get on with it_.

It would be quicker to drive to Venice and get a direct flight to New York, she decided as she got to her feet. She would stop in at the police station on the way.

* * *

_**November 13th 2007. Albany, New York.**_

"All right, see this thing? It's a valve cover. Inside are all the parts that are on the head. Hand me that socket wrench," Dean said, leaning over the engine. Sam looked back into the tool box, pulling out the wrench and passing it to his brother.

"All right, you with me so far?" Dean asked, settling the wrench over the nut.

Peering past him, Sam nodded. "Yeah, uh, valve cover covers the heads."

"Very good. Now this is your intake manifold, okay, and on top of it?" He paused, turning to look at Sam.

Sam's forehead creased up a little as he gave his brother an uncertain smile. "It's, uh, uh, a carburettor."

"Carburettor," Dean confirmed.

"Yeah," Sam said, firmly.

"Very good."

Looking at him, Sam shook his head. "What's with the auto shop?" He looked down at the wrench as Dean held it out to him. "What, you don't mean you want—"

"Yeah, I do," Dean said, waving the wrench at him. "You fix it."

Sam stared uncomfortably at the wrench. "Dean, you barely let me drive this thing."

"Well, it's time. You should know how to fix it. You're gonna need to know these things for the future," he said, his voice even as he met Sam's eyes. "And besides, that's my job, right? Show my little brother the ropes?"

_I wish you would drop the show and be my brother again. 'Cause ... just 'cause._

He turned away from the car and sat on the cooler, the bottle held by two fingers as he watched Sam fit the wrench and start unscrewing the nut.

"Put your shoulder into it," he suggested, lifting the beer and swallowing a mouthful.

"You want to go find Bela after this?" Sam asked, glancing sidelong at him as the nut came loose.

"No," Dean said. "Take the cover off."

Sam'd been right, he thought uneasily. He was fucking terrified and he'd been dealing with it by not dealing with it. There was a crapload of things he needed Sammy to know about, the car being the least of them.

"It's off."

Getting to his feet, Dean walked around the nose of the car to stand beside his brother. "Alright, this is where it gets fun."

* * *

_**December 8th 2007. Richmond, Virginia.**_

The small apartment consisted of three rooms with a kitchenette tucked into one corner. The largest of the rooms had been divided into sections by tall bookcases, back to back, forming solid but temporary walls. On every visible surface of the apartment's walls, sigils and symbols had been painted; the walls themselves were pockmarked by plaster patches, showing where the talismans and hex bags had been inserted, and covered up. A single lamp on the desk illuminated the area that served as a study.

Ellie closed the book and glanced up at the clock on the wall. Quarter past four, in the a.m, the time registering along with the knowledge that she couldn't keep running on the mix of caffeine and anxiety forever. Sighing and rubbing her eyes tiredly, she gazed around at the piles of books, papers, notes and discs of data that were piled on her desk, overflowing into stacks on the floor and shelves, all of which had to be mined for their information.

Somewhere in there, she was sure, there would be answer. Not the whole answer, but a fragment that she could put together with the other fragments she already knew. She'd spent the last four months looking for this knowledge, the lore and myth and accounts, pulling in favours, bartering with antique book sellers, following the faint leads throughout the oldest libraries and older places of learning; all in order to get this repository of information here. Now, all she had to do was go through it with a fine-toothed comb.

It all came down to Lilith, she thought. First wife of Adam, seductress of Sammael, witch, sorceress, and the oldest demon. Lucifer's first attempt to twist the souls of the human race he hated so much into something else, something unnatural, something against the Will of his Father.

Leaning on her elbows, her chin resting on her closed fists, she let her thoughts drift, waiting for a connection, for a pattern to suggest itself. She already knew far too much about the demon; her dreams were plagued with images of what Lilith had done, in the long span of her life and beyond. What else had she learned? Everyone, everything, had a weakness. A vulnerability. A chink in the armour, to be exploited, to be used. What was Lilith's?

Her gaze wandered, a little aimlessly, over the piles and stacks of books surrounding her. Most of them were medieval or older, demonologies, histories, accumulated knowledge from times when people had lived closer to their fears, and had struggled to find the ways to change the world with their minds. She skimmed down the spines of the books that were stacked on the corner of the desk and one title caught her eye.

Reaching out, she eased it from under the others and pulled it toward her. It was old and heavy, the leather binding cracking along the spine and the bindings, the pages thin and gilt-edged, filled with dense Latin text and woodcut illustrations. Reprinted from a fifteenth-century manuscript, it had come, she remembered, from a monastery in Kazakhstan, what _had_ been a monastery, at least. The burned out remains had still smelled faintly of ash when she'd picked her way through into the lowest levels.

She lifted the cover, smoothing out the dry parchment pages within. _Qui Serviunt Satanam_, the title page read. Those who serve the Adversary. Ellie exhaled softly and started to read.

Dawn came and went, and when Ellie finally lifted her eyes from the pages, it was ten o'clock in the morning. She didn't feel tired anymore.

She'd found it. That one piece that made sense of all the others. Closing the book gently, she got to her feet, stretching out her stiff muscles, and heading for the tiny kitchen and the coffee pot.

Rinsing out the filter and the pot at the sink, refilling the machine and turning it on, her thoughts were racing, her actions automatic. She'd learned a long time ago to break down the jobs that'd seemed impossible into manageable, human-sized chunks and tasks, and she refused to look at the entirety of what she was facing, thinking instead of the first step, and then the next. Of what she'd found, what needed to be acquired, what she already had.

When the coffee had finished percolating, she poured herself a cup and settled down at the small table near the kitchen with a fresh pad and pen, making notes as she began to break it all down and go through the details. She knew she was far from the finish, but at least now she was starting, not still in the limbo of waiting to find out if such a start were even possible.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

* * *

_**December 31st 2007. Sioux Falls, South Dakota.**_

Dean pulled into the yard, driving past the house and stopping the car in front of the workshop's big doorway. He turned off the engine and pulled out the keys.

He heard his brother opening the passenger door and getting out and he stared through the windshield, hearing the door clunk shut and turning in the seat, knowing Sam would ask him what was wrong in less than thirty seconds if he didn't move.

Walking around the shed to the house, he wondered how much longer he had before his brother found an answer he was going to have to veto.

They climbed the back steps to the kitchen door and walked in, both slowing as Ellen turned to look at them from the stove, and Jo lifted her head at the kitchen table.

"Where's Bobby?"

"Beer run," Jo said, looking back at the file on the table in front of her.

"He'll be back soon," Ellen said.

"How's the insurance going, Ellen?" Sam asked, walking to the table and sitting down opposite her daughter.

"Slow," she told him, flipping burger patties with a practised twist of her wrist. "Bobby's ready to kill me. I think we'll be out of his way in a week or two."

Leaning against the sink, Dean looked at her. "Everyone identified?"

Her mouth thinned out to a line as she nodded. "Yeah."

Jo looked around at her mother's tone, her face hardening. "What did you want to see Bobby for?" she asked Sam.

"Uh, research," Sam hedged, glancing at his brother. "I need to look up something."

"Oh, Sam, there're bunch of messages for you, by the phone in the living room," Ellen said, turning and gesturing at the doorway to the other room. "Bobby said to keep them."

Sam got up and walked through to the untidy room that was more study than living room, going to the desk and rummaging through the piles of paper on it. He didn't hear Dean come up behind him.

"Who're they from?"

"Ellie, mostly," Sam said, frowning as he read through them. "I had her number on my phone but for some reason it didn't transfer with the others to the laptop and I lost it when I destroyed the sims," he added in a lower voice, pulling it from his jacket pocket. "I asked Bobby to try her and he said he couldn't get through, then I guess he forgot about it."

Dean watched as he dialled the number on the messages.

When they'd reached the roadhouse, he'd thought maybe she'd been in there, killed with Ash, and, he'd thought then, Ellen. Ellen had shown up a day later at Bobby's on her own and had told him she hadn't been there. He knew that Sam had tried her number a few times after they'd replaced the phones, but hadn't been able to reach her.

Sam made a face and held the cell out from his ear, the tinny voicemail message clear.

"Ellie? It's Sam Winchester," he said, after the beep. "Got a new number."

He gave it and finished the call, tucking the phone and messages back into his pocket.

"Just voicemail," he told Dean, looking at the books scattered over the desk. "You want to stay? Wait for Bobby?"

Shaking his head, Dean looked out the window above the window seat. "No, not really in the mood for conversation." He turned back to his brother. "I'll get a room in town, you want to stay here?"

Sam looked at him, his forehead creased up a little. "Uh, yeah, for a while. I can get a ride into town with Ellen or Jo later on."

His phone shrilled in his pocket, startling both of them.

"Yeah?" he said, pressing the cell more tightly against his ear as he tried to hear the call. "Ellie? Wait – wait a sec, where are you?"

He walked away from the desk, eyes half-closed as he listened. "What? Okay, sure, talk to you then."

Dean lifted a questioning eyebrow as Sam walked slowly back to the desk. "What'd she say?"

"Not much. She's in Jerusalem." He looked blankly at Dean. "But she'll be back in a month. She said she wanted to talk to us about something, something that she couldn't talk about on the phone."

"In a month? That's kind of a long lead time, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Sam shook his head. "She sounded excited, not worried. Maybe it's not about a job."

"Maybe. She say what she's doing in, uh, Jerusalem?"

"Said she was looking for something, that's all."

* * *

Dean walked out of the house to the car, glancing up at the thick clouds piling from the north-east. The forecast was for a deep dump of snow across the corner of the state later and he didn't want to get caught there.

"Dean?"

He stopped and looked around, seeing Ellen come down the back steps toward him, pulling her coat tightly around her. Glancing impatiently at the car, he waited for her.

"I won't hold you up," Ellen told him, catching the look. "I – look, I just wanted to say that I know the trust between is pretty thin right now, after what happened with Gordon, and – well – after everything. But I swear to you, that no one finds out anything from us."

He thought of Jo, and looked away. "Yeah, well, that's not what I've seen."

"What?"

"Jo was pretty blunt in giving me history she had on a hunter," he said, looking back at her. "Told me you'd told her."

"What hunter?"

"Ellie Morgan."

She stared at him blankly. "Ellie? I haven't told Jo anything about Ellie."

He tucked his chin against his chest, looking down at the ground as he wondered who'd been telling the truth. "She said Ellie told you what happened to her partner, and you told her. Then she told me." Glancing back up at her, he shook his head. "Doesn't sound all that close-lipped to me."

Ellen's expression was drawn. "I didn't tell Jo what happened to Michael. She could've heard it from someone else –"

He shrugged. "Yeah, like the other hunters in the roadhouse could've put together what was happening to Sam and where we were," he said coolly. "Doesn't make a difference now."

Turning half-away from her, he continued, "You were quick to think that we'd use Jo as bait, Ellen."

"That – god, Dean, that was an overreaction, and you know it," she said, the memory of the fight with her daughter looming into her thoughts. She hadn't meant to tell Jo about Bill and John, not after all the years she'd kept it a secret. And Jo had gone straight out and thrown it at the brothers. "I told your brother that I forgave John a long time ago."

Dean shook his head. "But you didn't," he said, contradicting her. "If you had, it would've been over."

"I–" Ellen faltered, her protest disappearing as she recognised the truth of that.

Watching the expressions chasing over her face, Dean realised that Ellie'd been right about that too. You had to find out for yourself the truth of the events that changed you, hearing from someone else didn't help.

He jerked his head toward the house. "Bobby has Pastor Jim's journals, brought 'em back from Blue Earth after Jim was killed."

Ellen nodded as she looked uncertainly at him. "I know."

"Read them," Dean suggested. He looked at the black car, digging into his jeans pocket for the keys. "And talk to Jo about them."

He walked over to the car and got in, putting the key in the ignition and starting the engine before he glanced back to where Ellen stood, her head bowed.

Ellen had only been acting on her emotions, he knew, when she'd told Jo about her father. Scared that she was going to lose her daughter as well to a life she couldn't get out of. Neither had brought it up again but it was going to take time before he could think of trusting them again.

He drove slowly out of the yard as the first flakes began to land on the windshield and he flipped on the headlights as the day's light dimmed, following the county road into town, a glance in the rear-view showing the yard behind him empty.

* * *

Hours later, Dean stood outside the motel, grateful for the peace of the evening. Snow covered the ground, crunching underfoot as he walked past the car, turning onto the street. The small winter storm had dumped nearly six inches over the eastern half of the state, and turned the ordinary, somewhat unlovely street into a Norman Rockwell postcard.

Ellen had driven Sam in two hours before, when the storm had blown past, chains clanking on the car's wheels. His brother had been silent and withdrawn when he'd come in, pulling out the laptop and continuing to search, most of the rapidly-cooling pizza left on the table. Bobby's library hadn't turned up anything new and what had remained of Bill's had burned to ash when the roadhouse had been torched.

Watching his brother leaning over the keyboard, Dean had considered telling his brother yet again that he was wasting his time. He'd left it because he didn't want to argue any more. Sam'd been right.

He couldn't sit around in the motel. He wanted to look at the world, smell it, taste it, remember it. Time was flowing by, his time, and the milestones were disappearing fast behind him. His last Christmas, just passed, had been a big one.

He knew he wouldn't have changed his decision; the choice had been, for him, the only one possible. But he was slowly coming to realise what that choice had really meant. Where he was really going. What would really happen to him.

Pushing the thoughts away irritably, he pulled up the collar of the heavy leather coat and looked around at the quiet street. For now, it was time to smell the roses, not think about where it would all lead.

The memory of Ellie's call came back to him. Something she'd wanted to talk to them about, but not a job, Sam had said. And she was in Jerusalem? What the hell was she doing halfway around the world?

_What the hell do you care where she is or what she's doing?_ The small voice in his head asked tartly.

He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets against the icy chill of the night and started walking along the snow-covered street, his boots squeaking in the fresh powder. He didn't, he told himself firmly. She was out of the country half the time and he didn't know or care what she did when she wasn't helping them. It didn't make much of a difference anyway, he thought sourly. He knew he wouldn't tell her about the deal. He wondered briefly if Sam would.

In his mind's eye, he saw the dark motel room in North Dakota, the two of them sitting and waiting for his brother's call, and the conversation they'd had came back to him. He stopped walking, staring down at the faintly luminous snow at his feet. He'd told her more that night than he'd told his brother. He'd been barely hanging on at that point, fear and despair crushing him between them and he'd trusted her instinctively, not knowing why or how, only certain at the time that he could.

He shook off the memory with an impatient exhale. He didn't know what that had been, but he didn't have the luxury of time to explore things like that now. He was cutting his connections, not building them.

* * *

Sam sat inside the motel room, the screen of his laptop lighting his face with a cool white-blue light. He frowned, and retyped a new set of search criteria, skimming sites for any kind of information. Bobby had said that he wasn't going to find what he needed in books, but he didn't believe that. Somewhere, sometime, someone else had faced this. And somewhere, the solution was waiting, waiting for him to find it.

* * *

_**January 4th 2008. Northern Turkey.**_

Ellie settled her pack beside her and opened her canteen. She was in a rocky valley, a little over nine thousand feet above sea level, nearly a hundred miles north of Ezurum. The Pontides Mountains towered around her, the sharp peaks heavily covered with their thick winter mantling of snow.

Drinking sparingly from the water bottle, she opened the top pocket of her pack and pulled out the GPS, checking her location against the large-scale map of what she'd figured was the most feasible location.

The location of the Garden of Eden had long been sought, the possibilities a point of contention between the scholars of theology, and the more pragmatic geologists. The Biblical location was given as the river Pishon, now vanished. But the general consensus was that it did lie somewhere between the headwaters of the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, high in the mountain range that divided Turkey from Armenia and, to the north, the Russian state of Georgia. Geologically speaking, the region was likely. The area was a hot spot for earthquakes, the land moving frequently. All she needed to do was find the right place, the right era.

She'd gone straight to San Francisco on the first flight out of Richmond when she was sure that the key to the demon was correct. After three weeks of laboriously narrowing the possible locations for the place she needed, aided by two willing geologists who'd thought she was insane but who'd pulled the satellite photos, topographical data and geophysical survey data for her with plenty of enthusiasm, it'd come down to a single valley, half-collapsed at one end, but still enough of an anomaly to be the best chance of being the original site. The climatology reports, incomplete and with only half the data she'd needed, had agreed. The valley's botanical remains had been consistent as well. It was a long shot, she'd thought, but those were odds she was used to.

Only a few more miles to go now. She stoppered her canteen and got to her feet, hooking it onto her belt and pulling the straps of her pack back over her shoulders. The GPS went into her coat pocket, along with the map.

Shifting her pack higher on her pack, she started up the slope, breathing deeply in the thin air. The morning forecast had given her a few more days of good weather and she thought she'd be well out of the mountains by the time it was predicted to change.

Even with the location, the other items she'd needed for the pre-Christian ritual had presented far greater problems. The last two months, in London, Budapest and Israel, had been a non-stop rollercoaster, and the hike into the mountains was a welcomed break from deadlines, stress, planning and risk.

Picking her way between the sharp volcanic rocks, she thought about the unexpected success of the first task. The Israel Museum was no picnic to get into; the Shrine of the Book even less so, and she knew it would have been impossible to get the scrolls if they'd been on public display. The stroke of luck that the scrolls had been moved to the resting room, two days before she'd arrived, had been more of a coincidence than she could readily believe in, but she hadn't questioned it, had simply revised the plan and put it into effect. It was a shame to have to destroy such irreplaceable historical artefacts, but there was no other way. She needed the genuine article for the ritual to work.

It was probably pushing her luck to consider the hard bit over, she decided, checking her location again. She was too aware of time ticking away, Dean's time, and that awareness drove her faster than she otherwise would have gone on such a tricky job. The ritual would work, she knew, it would save him. She just had to make sure that she got everything they needed and got home in time.

She reached her goal at dusk. Around her, the steeps sides of the valley rose almost vertically, cutting out what little light was left in the sky. The layers and striations of the late Cretaceous volcanic rocks gave her the direction she needed. In the folds and rifts of the valley floor, lay the earth that was formed at the right time, a little over six thousand years before. She pulled the spectrometer from her pack, and scooped a teaspoonful of the soil into it.

The digital readout confirmed the dating. With a sigh of relief, she retrieved the iron box from the pack. It was small, she didn't need that much. When it was full of the crumbling black soil, she closed it and sealed it with wax. Wrapping the box in a layer of silk, she tucked it deep into her pack and straightened up, staring into the darkening sky with a deep exhale of relief, sending her thanks out to whatever might watching and listening between the stars.

The second task had been completed.

* * *

She made camp at the edge of the small valley, lighting a fire and cooking a couple of vacuum-packed sachets of food quickly over it. Away from the bright firelight, the sky was filled with millions of stars, a narrow band visible between the ridges that gave enough light for her to see her hands, to see the ground under her feet. In this place, between the ancient rock and the ancient stars, she thought about the enchantress who'd become Lucifer's first demon.

_Lilith holds all the contracts! Everyone else just works on commission._

The demon had been terrified but truthful, and a long conversation with Patrick and with Fionnula had confirmed that the Persian ritual would do what it claimed to.

Lilith held all the contracts. She knew she would be saving more than just Dean's life and soul by killing her, and some of those she saved would not deserve it. It was a price she was willing to pay, whatever the consequences turned out to be.

Another thought snagged at her. The way things had happened … Dean had made the deal because Sam had been killed by another of the special children. Why then had the demons been hunting him so assiduously the previous year? Azazel's army had been released, without Sam leading it … was there a human leader for the army or had all the Fallen's lieutenants been killed? Had all those demon whispers been … propaganda?

She drew her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them as she stared into the dancing flames of the campfire. What was Hell's real purpose for Sam? Was there even a purpose for Sam?

In Jim's journal, the priest had written that multiple demon interrogations by many hunters had returned the same information. Two demons, locked in a battle for supremacy. One of the Fallen, building an army of demons to be led by humans. The other the first demon, holder of every soul that still walked the earth. Jim had speculated about the war he could see coming, but he'd been unable to draw a conclusion from it. The prophecy Bela had sold her was about the seals, the seals to the cage of the Devil. According to the Church's documents, there were sixty-six in total, but aside from the first and last, they were of a possible six hundred and sixty-six, and the Church, at least, had no further information on which seals were more vulnerable than the others.

She rubbed the heel of her hand over her forehead, her frustrated exhale white under the starlight. No matter which way she looked at the pieces she had, she couldn't make them fit together.

Not enough information, she thought, irritated with herself for asking questions that had no answers. She needed to find out more, but she couldn't think of where to get that information. It wasn't like she could stroll down into Hell and ask someone.

Climbing into the sleeping bag, she rolled onto her side and stared at the fire. He wasn't going to know why she'd done this, she thought, a little nervously. She could tell him that she was balancing the scales, a life for a life. He might believe it … paying his debts was something he'd done his whole life. The few people who knew her well had already seen the difference, even when she'd brushed off their questions and looks, but he didn't know her and he wouldn't guess.

Two out of three of the vital ingredients were hers. The bowl should be easiest of the three to acquire. Closing her eyes, she pushed the tangled thoughts of Dean and Lilith and Azazel and Sam out of her head, regulating her breathing until her mind had cleared. Only one thought remained.

It was time to go home.

* * *

_**March 6th 2008. Hazard, Kentucky.**_

Dean rotated his left shoulder, easing the twinges in the muscles. The gunshot wound was still a hole in his shoulder, matching set to the one he'd gotten the year before. He ignored the ache, and let his gaze wander over the upstairs bedroom.

Sam was walking around the perimeter, his attention firmly fixed on the electromagnetic frequency detector in his hand. It fluctuated in the low range, as he pointed it at the walls, doors, windows and vents.

"I don't know, Dean," he said doubtfully, looking up. "This isn't really giving much above normal readings."

Dean shrugged. "If it's above normal at all, there's something here."

The spectre formed behind Sam without warning and the EMF went off. Sam's eyes widened at the gauge in his hand, its high-pitched scream filling the room as Dean brought the shot gun up.

"Sam, down!" he yelled. Sam dropped and the salt-loaded shotgun shell dissipated the ghost instantly.

"Debate over. There's something here and it's pissed." Dean reached down to pull his brother to his feet. "What was the history?"

"Not much. It wasn't confirmed but there's a story that in 1936 the owner murdered his wife here."

"I'd say it's confirmed now." Dean turned around slowly, the shotgun level, ready to blast anything that came at them. "We'll have to look for the detail."

Sam nodded and grabbed his bag. "County office?"

"And library, yeah." Dean backed out slowly behind Sam. They went out of the house, closing the door behind, and looked at it from the street.

"Nasty," Dean commented. "But not going to be too hard to clear."

Sam smiled. "Yeah, well, if it's just the one event, and we can find out the details, and the body …"

"Sammy, you worry too much." Dean flashed him a grin and turned to the car. "Do you want the County office or the library?"

"Library." Sam tossed the bag into the backseat and got in the car.

* * *

Two hours later, they met back at the motel.

"Okay, not so easy," Dean admitted, sitting down at the table. "No murders reported."

"Yeah, I found that too. But if the body was never found, it would be a missing person, right? And there was a woman reported missing in 1936, by her sister." Sam read from his notes. "Alice Kronke was reported missing in July 1936. Her husband, Albert had disappeared as well, but he went to the trouble of telling a few folks in town that they were moving to Minnesota."

"So, he ganked her and left?" Dean shook his head slightly at the inexplicability of people. "Why get married if you hate them so much you want to kill them?"

"I guess it didn't start out that way. But yeah, that's what it looks like. And I think the body is buried or hidden in the house, somewhere."

"And the party never stops …" Dean stood up. "Ready to go and dig up a body?"

"As I'll ever be." Sam pushed his notes back into the folder, and picked up the bag.

* * *

It took four hours, but they found the body in the attic, stuffed into a metal steamer trunk, packed in sand.

"Must have mummified up here in the heat," Sam commented as he upended a sack of salt over the remains.

Dean squirted butane over the top. "Yeah. Guess it wasn't the way she thought she'd end up."

He dropped the match into the trunk and watched the dried flesh and bones catch and burn. He would never understand the murderous impulses of so-called ordinary people, he thought. Over the years they'd seen murdered husbands, murdered wives, murdered kids and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles. Didn't anyone love their family? How did the bonds of growing up together get so twisted that murder seemed like a good solution?

He glanced briefly at his brother, standing beside him, his face lit by the flames. There had been a lot of times when he'd been angry with Sam, or frightened of him. The promise his father had extracted from him before dying was still a scream in his head, bringing a cold sweat and a roil in his gut if he thought about it. It hadn't taken Meg's possession to know that he couldn't follow that order, that he be damned before he let anything happen to his brother. Literally, in fact.

When the flames had died and only ash and sand remained, Dean reached over and closed the lid.

"Well, that wasn't as fun as it used to be." He rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. "Let's get something to eat."

Sam nodded as he packed away their gear. "Sometimes I think that people are worse than the monsters."

Dean looked at him. "Never doubted it."

* * *

They got takeout and ate in the room. Dean watched as Sam opened his laptop again.

"You think you're going to find out anything on there?" he asked quietly. Sam looked over at him.

"I don't know, that's why I keep looking."

Dean turned away. "We've looked everywhere, Sam. I don't think there's anything to find."

"You want to just give up?" Sam asked in frustration. "That's up to you. I can't."

Dean went over to his bed and lay down. Time was going, faster and faster. They hadn't discovered anything that they hadn't already known; not through the research, not through torturing demons, not from Ruby or any other source they'd been able to locate.

Every day he thought of more and more things he was going to miss, going to miss out on. Things he hadn't thought of as being so important before, things he'd thought he have time to do, to feel, to be; things that had seemed unattainable, impossible, but that he could now see were just outside his field of experience, not impossible, just unlikely. He hadn't realised how much he wanted those things, until they were taken away by the relentless ticking of the clock that was counting down to his death.

It was coming. There was no way to stop it. He'd made the deal and he'd just have to … well, not live with it. Die with it. And leave Sam alone, unprotected, with Lilith on his ass. Some job of looking after his little brother.

He rolled onto his side. He wouldn't take it back, wouldn't regret the choice he'd made, but he was willing to admit, now, that he was scared. Really scared.

"_It's not philosophy, it's not a metaphor. There's a real fire in the pit, agonies you can't even imagine. The same thing will happen to you. It might take centuries, but sooner or later Hell will burn away your humanity. Every hell bound soul, every one, turns into something else. Turns you into us, so yeah, yeah you can count on it._

Ruby's words echoed in his mind.

* * *

_**April 12th 2008. Cambridge, Massachusetts.**_

The buildings on the campus were quiet and dark under a moonless sky. Across the spacious grounds, the accommodation buildings, the library and some of the labs were still open, but the administration buildings and the Semitic Museum had been closed for hours. It was a shame the trip to Turkey had had its delays, Ellie thought as she walked silently through the black-on-black shadows of the gardens. She could have done this when the whole place was less crowded during spring break. One wide streak of luck was probably all she could ask for on this job, she considered with an inward shrug.

When she gained the concealment of the eastern side of the building, she pulled the rim of the balaclava down over her face. The security guards patrolled the whole building once every hour. The last patrol had just finished, the guard had returned to the office. She had a maximum of fifteen minutes to get in, get the incantation bowl, and get out again.

There were two levels of alarms, one for the entrances to the building; another set, inside, controlled the internal alarm system. Bridging the external alarm was simple, the cables accessible through a readily-identified manhole just outside the museum. She picked the lock on the basement door at the rear of the building, easing it open just enough to slip through, and closed it again. From the schematic she'd acquired, the internal alarm system control panel was in the security guard's office, but there was an auxiliary panel in the basement, installed to enable an override, if the security office were breached. She silently thanked the thoughtfulness of the alarm company as she headed for it.

Pulling out the small keypad and interface from her pocket, she plugged it into the alarm's chipset when the cover had been removed and typed in a command code to override the system. The light on the alarm remained green but was flashing, indicating it was in standby mode. Satisfied, Ellie glanced at her watch and headed for the display rooms.

The blueprint of the building was clear in her mind's eye as she counted off the lefts and rights, moving soundlessly along the corridors, keeping to the side that held the most shadow. The internal alarm system controlled the security cameras and the command she'd typed in had blocked the cameras, the screens in the security office now showing the last recorded frame instead of recording new ones. There was a fail safe for the system of course, but if she could get in and out within the time frame, she could beat it and the guards upstairs would never know that anyone had ever been there.

Ellie took a deep breath and crossed the corridor as she saw door to the Artefacts section. The display cases were wired to a separate alarm system, in the office at the back of the room, and she disarmed it quickly, checking the time again as she walked fast along the rows of exhibits, looking for the incantation bowls. There were two on display here, rare finds from a dig in Iran. One had been broken. The other was intact. Both held the spell circles for the binding of the demon Lilith.

She found the case and lifted the latch, taking the bowl carefully out. From her small black pack, she pulled out a box, ten inches by ten inches and packed with foam. She eased the bowl into it carefully, then shut it and returned it to her pack.

Reaching past the box, she drew out another bowl. This one was a plastic replica of the bowl she'd just stolen. Available at the museum shop $19.95 after tax. She smiled as she put the replica into the display case, and closed the lid. It wouldn't stand up to much scrutiny, but she'd be long gone by the time someone with knowledge noticed the swap.

Her pulse was beating at a steady rate, largely due to the iron control she'd forced herself to learn and use on jobs like this. Walking fast back to the office, she reset the alarm for the display cases, then retraced her steps down to the basement. She unclipped the bridging clips from the internal alarm, tucking them into her pack, and walked quietly through the basement rooms to the exterior door, keeping out of view of the two cameras that scanned the area. As the external door's lock snicked behind her, Ellie knelt beside the manhole cover and lifted it, unclipping the bridge to the external alarm and resetting it. The red light blinked to green and she eased the cover back into place and got to her feet.

All back to normal. She looked down at her watch. Thirteen minutes had passed since she'd entered the building. It wasn't a record, she decided, but it wasn't bad. She slipped along the building's wall, then crossed to the tree at the front, staying in the shadows until she reached the fence on the other side of the road.

Stopping in its long shadow, she peeled off the balaclava, and the short, black jacket with its multiple, zippered pockets, rolling them up and pushing them into the pack. Under the jacket she wore a thin green sweatshirt with the college's logo printed prominently over her chest. She shook out her hair, leaving it loose over her shoulders and down her back and slipped one strap of the pack over her shoulder, walking out of the shadows and down the road toward the front of the library, just another student on campus.

* * *

_**April 15th 2008. New Orleans.**_

Sam looked up as Dean opened the door and walked through, carrying two white paper bags with soggy bottoms and the smells of po'boys drifting out ahead of them.

"You find him?"

Dean nodded. "Working out of a hole in the wall on Tchoupitoulas."

"Can we take him?"

"Not there," Dean said, setting the sandwiches down on the table and going to the motel's small fridge for a beer. "We'll follow him when he leaves and pick him up somewhere on the road."

"You think that demon's word was enough on this?" Sam asked, opening his bag.

Dean cocked a brow at him as he sat down and picked up his sandwich. "You think he had anything left to shine us on with a name that matches up down here?"

Merrick had been easy to find, relatively speaking. The demon was overseeing a number of rackets in the city and the cops had a sheet on him a mile long.

"I checked with the cops," Sam said, picking up the sandwich and looking at the oozing, dripping filling with a mixture of anticipation and concern. "Looks like they're totally stitched up, we're not going to get any help there."

"Good thing we're not arresting the sonofabitch then, isn't it?" Dean said around a mouthful. "What about someplace, uh, discreet to take him?"

Sam nodded. "We cross the river straight on Crescent City and there's a whole lot of shipping container barges on the next bend. Most of them are empty."

"Good." Dean turned his attention back to the po'boy.

* * *

The interior of the container was cool, the insulation that kept the contents frozen when the refrigeration motor was running also keeping the temperature stable when it wasn't. Sam walked around the devil's trap on the floor, looking at the man chained to the chair in the centre.

"Where is she?"

The man's eyes rolled around to follow him, his long, thin face creasing up in a smile. Blood was crusted over one brow and along the tattered edges of his shirt. Before the demon had taken over, he'd been a two-bit hustler and an alcoholic with no more than the clothes on his back to his name. Merrick had changed all that when he'd found the man face down in the gutter and had slipped in.

"There's nothing you can do to me that would inspire me to talk, boys," he said in a conversational tone. "Nothing that even compares to what she'd do if she found out."

Dean glanced across the circle at his brother. "Oh, I think we could surprise you," he said.

Sam pulled out the battered notebook from his coat pocket, watching the demon as he opened it. He looked down at the page, and began to read the binding incantation Ellie had given him, his voice deepening and echoing slightly from the close walls of the container as the Latin flowed thick as honey and surrounded the demon.

Dean watched the demon's eyes widen and flick to black as the ritual began to dig into it.

"You can't – no, that's not possible," Merrick said, the flesh of his vessel rippling over his frame as his essence was changed. "That was lost, no one had it–"

"Wrong on all counts," Dean told him, his mouth lifting to one side in a humourless smile.

In Coeur d'Alene, the demon inhabiting Jeffrey had been similarly surprised by the ritual, spilling information uncontrollably once the binding had been complete. He wanted to see Ellie again, just to tell her how well it'd worked.

"Where is she?"

"I don't know!" Merrick's voice rose to a scream. "She moves – around – all – the – time!"

"Why does she want Sam?" Dean turned back to the circle, flicking the flask and sending a splash of holy water over him.

Merrick shrieked, his body bowing backward against the chains and the spell, his skin smoking.

"She wants to kill him!" he cried out. "To strip the meat from his bones and destroy him!"

"WHY!?" Sam yelled at the demon.

"Because you can kill her!" the demon screamed back at him, its eyes flying open and staring at him. "You're the only one who can kill her!"

Sam froze, standing on the edge of the circle and staring at him. On the opposite side of the circle, Dean looked from Merrick's ravaged face to his brother's stunned one. He could see Sam's fear under that blank expression.

"How?" he asked Merrick. "How can he do that?"

"I don't know, I don't, I swear it," the demon moaned, flinching back from the raised flask in the hunter's hand. "I just know that she's going to kill him before he can do her."

"How do I break the deal?" Sam asked, stepping closer. "Dean's deal – how can I break it?"

"You can't!" Merrick said, his black eyes flicking from Sam to Dean. "There's no way out – she needs him – the deal is iron-clad. Only death releases."

"Needs him for what?" Sam asked, his eyes narrowing as he caught the phrase.

"Whose death?" Dean asked over the top of Sam.

Merrick opened his mouth and his face bulged, turning first red then white then blue.

"What the hell –?" Dean looked at him. "He choking?"

The door to the container slammed open and a slender blonde stood there, hands on her hips.

"You believe me now?" Ruby asked, cocking her head to one side as she stared at the demon.

"Let him go!" Sam snapped, taking a long stride toward her.

"Can't do that," Ruby retorted. "You weren't as discreet as you thought. We're going to have company in the next three minutes and you do not want to be here," she added, then looked back at the demon. "And you can't leave him alive to tell them what he told you."

Dean turned and drove the knife into Merrick's chest, the meatsuit boiling with light as he twisted it.

"Come on," Ruby said, ignoring Sam's furious look from the dead demon to his brother to her.

Dean pushed Sam's shoulder toward the door. "We'll argue about it later, let's go," he said. He could hear the sirens. There were more than bent cops in the town, some were possessed and they were both wanted, even if every cop there was straight and clean.

Getting into the car, he glanced through the mirror to meet Ruby's eyes briefly.

"How'd you find us?"

She exhaled gustily, looking out through the window. "Where'd you get that binding spell?"

"A friend," Sam grated at her. "Funny how you never mentioned it."

Ruby's eyes narrowed as she looked back at him. "We didn't know it still existed."

"Funny too how you told me you could save Dean, and it turns out there's no way," Sam said, turning around in the seat to stare at her.

"There is a way," Ruby contradicted him softly. "And I did tell you that. You heard Merrick, you can kill her, and then the contract – all the contracts – are nulled, broken."

"Using his 'powers'?!" Dean said, his eyes flicking back to the mirror. "Right?"

"Right."

"Wrong," Dean snapped, his shoulders rigid with tension as he stared back at the road. "No."

"Dean –" Sam swallowed, looking from the demon in the back seat to his brother.

"No, Sammy," Dean said, shaking his head. "Just no."

He glanced back at Ruby. "Someplace we can drop you?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

_**April 25th 2008. Salem, Massachusetts.**_

From the shadow of the building's doorway, Ellie stared around the open square, scrutinising every person she could see. None of them looked out of place or as if they were lingering in the square without a reason. It could've been paranoia at being so close to the end, she reflected, watching the passers-by, the small group of office workers sitting on the benches and eating their lunches, the mothers with their young children playing on the park equipment. It could've been, but she didn't think it was.

She stepped out of the narrow entrance and walked down the street, crossing at the other end of the short square and working her way around the playground to the phone booth on the other side. No one seemed to be interested in her but the feeling, as of something crawling over her skin, remained.

Slipping into the booth, Ellie dialled Sam's number, punching the keys on the payphone hard. She looked around again, her concentration focussed as she studied the square warily, the ringing of the phone in her ear barely registering. The feeling, of being watched, of someone's interest in her, had been growing the past two months. She hadn't spotted anyone, and she wasn't completely sure that there was anyone to see, but the sense, tingling through her nerve ends, was making her uneasy.

"Hello?"

"Sam? It's Ellie," she said quickly. Under his voice, she could hear the car, music playing loudly.

"Ellie, hey, kind of expecting a call a couple of months ago," Sam said, pressing his free hand against his ear as his brother reached out to turn the car stereo down.

"Sam, listen to me. I need to meet with you, soon. I can't explain on the phone. Where are you?" The discomforting sense of eyes on her sharpened and she looked up and around, too aware of how exposed she was standing in the glass-paned booth.

In the car, Sam frowned. "What's wrong?"

Dean looked over at him, his brows drawing together at Sam's tone.

"Nothing, nothing's wrong," she said, shaking her head. "I'm in Massachusetts. Where're you?"

"We're in Vermont," Sam said, turning his head to looked at his brother. "Turn around man, we're going to Massachusetts. Ellie, where in Mass are you?"

"No, not here," she told him, calculating how much time she'd need to get to a central meeting point. "I'll meet you in Connecticut. Windsor. There's a church on Maple Avenue. St Raphael's."

"Ellie, what's this about?" Sam asked, his voice worried.

"How long will it take you to get there?"

"Dean, how long to get to Windsor, Connecticut?" Sam asked, shifting in the seat toward him.

Staring through the windshield at the road, Dean frowned. It was nearly a straight shot down the 91, but there were a lot of towns to get through.

"Two, three hours max," he said, allowing a small buffer for unforeseen accidents, detours and roadworks.

"About two to three hours, Ellie," Sam told Ellie. "You gotta tell me what's going on."

He pressed the phone harder against his ear and heard her draw in a deep breath on the other end of the line, her voice firming as she said, "I can break Dean's contract, for good, without it affecting you. That's all I can tell you now. I'll see you there."

Hanging up the phone, she walked fast from the phone booth, heading south along the street. The feeling of being watched had gone, but it didn't reassure her. Her fingers reached up to touch the pendant that hung around her neck. No demon should've been able to see her or follow her while she wore it. Something could, though, she thought, increasing her speed as she crossed the street and hurried down the block toward her pickup.

She hadn't realised they'd be so close. Everything for the ritual was at her apartment, another five hours' drive. She dismissed the thought impatiently. There were still a lot of details to be worked out, and she had the file with her, enough to convince them both that it was real, she hoped. One world-altering step at a time, she told herself.

* * *

_**Vermont.**_

Sam closed the phone and slowly returned it to his pocket.

Beside him, Dean shot his brother a fast sideways look, brows drawing down as he registered his blank expression. "What!? What is it?"

"Ellie said she can break your contract," he said, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair as he turned to look at Dean. "Said she could break it for good, without me dying."

On the wheel, Dean's knuckles abruptly stood out white under the skin. He kept his gaze fixed on the road, trying to damp down the surge of hope that started in his gut and was rising rapidly. "For real?"

"She said she'll tell us when we get there," Sam told him, staring out at the road unwinding in front of them. After a moment, he turned his head to look at his brother. "She'd never lie about this, Dean. If she wasn't completely sure, she'd never bring it up."

Dean nodded slowly. Sam was right. Ellie wouldn't've mentioned it unless it was a sure thing. She was meticulous that way about anything she did or said. "Yeah."

Too many thoughts were churning in his head and too much emotion was churning in his gut. He tried to focus his attention on the road, tried to drag in a deep breath to loosen the muscles that had tightened around his chest.

Saved.

He'd lived with the certainty of going to Hell for so long now; he couldn't make himself believe there could be any other way. Memory stabbed into him and he shivered, his fingers closing hard around the wheel. If she'd found a loophole, he wouldn't be able to take it. He couldn't walk free and let his brother drop dead. Sam said he wouldn't die. How had she known about that? How the hell had she found about the deal anyway?

If it was a way to be free of the death sentence that was hanging over his head, a way it could be done without having to lose or use his brother, without having Sam start on a path that all his instincts screamed at him was wrong …

His eyes narrowed, his jaws closing hard against each other as another shiver ran through him. No matter what, he already knew he'd take death to prevent Sam from using the abilities to kill Lilith. But if there was another way … he wanted to live. All that shit he'd told his little brother, it'd all been lies. He wanted to live out his life, do the things he'd been trying to not to think about for the last eleven months. He'd walked with death twice now and on some level, he knew it was wrong that he was still breathing. Felt that wrongness down in his bones. _What's dead should stay dead_. Another part of him was trying to fight that knowledge, trying to believe in hope. There was too much he hadn't done, or seen or felt.

"I can't - I can't take it in," he admitted into the silence filling the car between them, his voice raw in his throat. Next to him, Sam gave a shaky laugh.

"I know, neither can I," he said. Leaning back in the corner of the seat, he shook his head. "I mean, I don't know what she's found, but – Dean, if it's real –"

Dean nodded uncertainly. If it was real.

"How the hell did she find it?"

Hearing the faint edge in his tone, Dean threw a sidelong glance at him and saw where he was going. "Don't, Sam," he warned his brother. "She's got better contacts than us, maybe she had more luck. We don't know anything yet."

"Yeah. No, you're right," Sam agreed, nodding unwillingly. "How'd she even find out about it?"

Dean shook his head. He didn't want to think about that, didn't want to know what she'd learned. He should've known he couldn't have kept it a secret. He didn't want to think about how many other hunters out there knew as well.

"I don't know. But every demon we've come across knew about it. So maybe she ran into one who knew as well," he reasoned reluctantly.

"Yeah."

* * *

_**April 25th 2008. Windsor, Connecticut.**_

The last rays of the setting sun lit the street to gold, too low for the visor, and Dean lifted his hand, shading his eyes as he turned the car onto Maple Avenue. He slowed and Sam craned his neck out of the window, looking for the church.

They saw it at the same time, a tall, gloomy-looking brick church on the next block, set back from the street on a corner. Sam sat up straight in his seat as he recognised the white pickup parked a half a block up the side street.

"That's Ellie's truck."

Turning into the side street, Dean swung the wheel around. The car made the turn with inches to spare from the opposite kerb and he pulled in behind the truck, leaving the engine running. The neighbourhood was empty and quiet, the Impala's muted growl the only noise they could hear as they watched the street for a few minutes. He turned the key, the engine dying, when he was sure that their arrival hadn't drawn any undue attention.

Getting out of the car together, they walked along the concreted path by the side of the church, turning at the front and climbing the stairs that led up to the main entrance. The two doors were locked tight, and through the windows they could see that the church was dark inside.

"Where is she?" Dean asked irritably, looking around and feeling entirely too exposed against the flat front of the building. The streetlights were coming on as the last of the daylight faded incrementally from the sky.

Sam shrugged, leaning over the iron railings that bordered the front steps to peer down the other side of the church. "I don't know."

There was a clunk from the inside of the doors, then two more. They turned back as one opened slowly, seeing a pale sliver of Ellie's face in the widening gap, lit up by the streetlamp in front of the church.

"C'mon, inside, quickly." She pushed the door open a bit wider, and stood aside to let them through, closing it after them, and shooting the long bolts back. The interior of the church was dim, the pews and altar and columns barely visible in the gloom.

Turning to face them, Ellie waved a hand down the aisle toward the rear of the church.

"I'm set up in the sacristy," she said. "No windows and it's safe to have a light on there."

Neither man moved and she smiled suddenly at them, a mega-wattage smile that gleamed in the near-dark.

"It's true. It's real," she said, seeing their identical expressions of doubt. "The only way to break the contract is to kill her, and we can do it."

"How?" Sam asked, his brow creasing up. He'd spent months trying to find a way.

"Lilith holds your contract, Dean." Ellie looked at him.

The brothers nodded. "Yeah, we know," Dean said.

"I found a ritual, actually there're three separate ones, but they'll interlock if the timing's right," she told Sam, turning and walking fast down the aisle of the church, not waiting for them to follow. "They will summon and bind and destroy her."

"It wasn't exactly easy to get everything, but I've got it now." She half-turned, looking back at them over one shoulder. "Not here, unfortunately, I didn't know you'd be so close. It's all at my place, but we've got a bit more time, and we need to get the right location to do it. The final spell needs the last crescent of the waning moon, that's April 30. I know the timing's close, but this is the only way."

"H-how'd you do this?" Sam hurried to catch up to her, Dean following slowly. "I've been looking at everything I could find, everywhere –"

"I got lucky, Sam, really lucky," Ellie said, shaking her head. "I had a lot of the pieces already, I just didn't know it. Come on, it's more comfortable in the sacristy, I'll try and explain it all there."

"Ellie, how'd you find out about the deal?" Dean came up beside them as they walked through the doorway to one side of the altar.

"I was exorcising a demon. It tried to bargain, offered the information as leverage." She looked up at him, her eyes shadowed. "It was, uh, it was a surprise."

"Yeah, well, I didn't have a choice." He looked down at her, his mouth compressing sourly. "How'd you find out that Lilith held all the contracts?"

"Same exorcism. It thought I was sending it back to Hell." She turned away, closing the door to the church and flicking on the lights.

Dean looked at Sam, one brow raised. "You used the knife?"

She shook her head. "I'm using a combination of two traps, the Solomon trap and an older one. Much older, really, Aramaic from before Christ's time. It isn't a trap. Once the demon is free of the victim, it gets drawn into a spell which absorbs it and kills it." She gestured impatiently at the table. "Look, it's all here, I was going to give the details to Bobby as soon as I got stateside again, just –"

She cut herself off. She wasn't sure that her feelings of being watched were real, and she didn't want to complicate the situation with her fears, when it was complicated enough as it was.

The sacristy was a long room, with a couple of small tables by the door and a longer table further into the room, surrounded by long benches.

Sam looked at Dean. "Kills it?"

"Yeah. Disintegrates it. Unmakes it, I guess." She sat down at the long table, picking up her bag from the floor beside the bench.

"Where did you find out about that?" Sam frowned; Bobby had mentioned something about Hebrew demon traps a while ago. They'd never found a template for one though.

"I have a few sources in Europe and the Middle East. One of them works on archaeological dig sites in Jordan. They found a number of trap bowls there, and a piece of a roof. He sent me the designs as soon as they'd logged them."

From the bulky leather pack, she pulled out a file and passed it to Dean. Sam sat down on the opposite side of the table, moving over as Dean sank down slowly on the bench next to him, his attention fixed on the contents of the file in his hands.

Laying it open on the table, he pushed it toward Sam a little, so they could both read it.

Watching them, Ellie felt her pulse racing and she pulled in a deeper breath to counteract it, acknowledging the wash of emotion that fluxed through her but keeping it under tight control. They weren't finished yet, even though it was close, almost close enough to touch. She couldn't afford to relax yet, and letting those feelings out before the ritual had been completed would only weaken her resolve and her concentration. She could let it go when he was safe, she told herself, then banished the thought.

There hadn't been a single moment that she'd asked herself what she was doing.

Sam looked up after a couple of minutes of reading through her notes, his expression filled with doubt. "Ellie, how are we going to get the Dead Sea scrolls. They're in Israel, aren't they?"

"Haven't you been listening, Sam?" she asked, the corner of her mouth quirking, her eyes bright with tension. "I told you, I've got everything we need. What do you think I've been doing for the last five months?"

"You have a Persian incantation bowl?" Dean looked at her, his brows raised sceptically.

"Yeah, that was the easiest thing to get; the Semitic Museum at Harvard had two."

"Dead Sea scrolls, the _actual_ Dead Sea scrolls, written on skin or whatever?" His gaze skimmed down the page, reading through the list that the incantations and spells of the ritual required.

"Mmm," she said, a small crease appearing between her brows at the memory. "That was difficult. You have no idea of the security measures at the Israel Museum." She looked up, meeting his eyes. "But yeah, I've got them."

"That's what you were doing in Jerusalem?" Dean asked her. "Stealing crap from a museum?"

Ellie shrugged. "Couldn't get them any other way."

"Earth from the Garden of Eden," Sam read out loud, his voice flat. He lifted his head to look at her. "Is that a joke?"

She snorted derisively, then shook her head. "No. No joke. I had to hike for four days to get it, in January, in the Pontides Mountains, Turkey," she told him. "Look, this is a – a surprise, I get that. But trust me; none of this is a joke."

She leaned across the table, the overhead light catching the strands of gold amidst the deeper copper and red in her hair and her expression smoothed into a cool sobriety as she looked from one brother to the other. Looking back at her, Dean both saw and felt the change, the staticky crackle of tension that had emanated from her since she'd opened the church door was muted and subdued and she looked older, and, he thought with a touch of surprise, exhausted.

"I was looking for a vulnerability," she said, and he noticed her eyes darken a little with some memory. "There were three rituals, in three separate daemonums. I didn't even know I had them but when I found about the deal, a friend told me that they could be used together – to summon, to bind and to unmake. All I needed was something material to tie Lilith the ritual."

Sam felt his breath stutter in his chest as it became clear to him the amount of work it'd taken the woman sitting opposite to find what she had. He glanced at his brother, seeing Dean's attention fixed on Ellie's face as she continued.

"When the moon has one night left of waning, before the dark phase, there is a summoning for Lilith; it used to be used to keep children safe from her. The incantation is in the bowl and it's completely specific to Lilith's essence. The scrolls hold the exorcism for her, a part of which is their destruction during the ritual," she said, waving a hand toward the file. "Those two spells are both as old as she is."

"But killing her?" Dean asked uncertainly, looking at his brother. "We've been interrogating demons, Ellie, they all say the same thing, she can't be–"

Sam scowled as he cut him off, "They said she can't be killed, except the last one. It said I could kill her," he said, his voice sharp. "It said I was the only one who could kill her."

Dean saw the small crease reappear between her brows at Sam's tone. "A demon told you that you're only one who can kill her?"

"Two," Dean said, ignoring Sam's look of surprise at the admission. "Another demon said the same thing."

"I don't know what to tell you, but they're both wrong," Ellie said, leaning back from the table as she looked at them. "I couldn't work out how to tie the last spell to her but it's the earth - the earth, from the place she was made by God, that's her vulnerability."

"What?" Dean looked at her in confusion.

"She was Adam's first wife," Sam explained impatiently. "Before Eve, according to the bible. She was made from earth, the same as Adam."

"Right," Ellie confirmed with a light shrug. "You gotta love the dogma when it finally works in your favour."

"Demons lie," she continued, her gaze meeting Dean's briefly then shifting back to Sam. "Maybe they didn't know it all? What I know is that this will destroy her, it will void the contracts she holds and that will stop any crossroads demon from killing you in retribution."

Huffing out a long breath, Dean nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

Sam's brow was still creased. "You think those demons were lying about me killing her?"

"I don't know, Sam," she said. "There's something else I found out, and it's possible it has to do with what was going on before you killed Azazel, but we need to get moving on this first, and we can deal with the other stuff after it's done."

He sighed, nodding in agreement and trying to gather his attention back on what they needed to do. "Do we have enough time to get this done?"

"Yeah, we should if we can figure out a location that fits what we need." She glanced down at the file. "Hallowed ground, an old church that's been in continuous use, or a node in the ley lines, something that has its own protection, its own power. I didn't have the time to go looking for it, just wanted to let you know first."

'I'll see what Bobby can come up with." Sam pulled out his phone and stood up, walking to the other end of the room as he dialled the hunter's number.

Getting to her feet, Ellie pulled her phone from the inside pocket and hit one of the speed dials. Dean wondered who she was calling, then pushed the question aside. She'd told him she had a lot of friends, most of them on the fringes of the hunting life, but a few who were like themselves. He watched her as she walked slowly to the end of the table. The tension had returned, he saw, making her movements choppy and sharp.

It always surprised him when he saw her again that she wasn't as tall as he remembered. Maybe five-foot five, five-six at the most, she had a small frame, slender now to the point of skinniness, the bones of her face jutting out a little, and her elbows and wrists showing prominently, her sleeves pushed up above them. The misremembering might've been due to what he'd seen her do, he considered, as he took the opportunity to study her without her knowing.

Her long copper-red hair was drawn back from her face, hanging down her back in the now-familiar single thick braid. Strands and tendrils had tugged loose, framing her face with its creamy fair redhead's complexion. It was faintly marred by a couple of fine, white scars; one of them through the fine, dark red brow on the left side of her face, the other from the corner of her right cheekbone down to the hinge of her jaw; and a light sprinkle of amber freckles over her nose and cheekbones. The delicate features were bare of makeup and he couldn't remember seeing her wear the stuff at any time. He couldn't see her eyes, she was staring at the floor as she paced restlessly across the room, the cell pressed hard to one ear, but he knew them. She didn't need makeup to accentuate their vivid colour or to draw attention to the wide, full-lipped mouth with its natural rose tint.

To look at her here, it was hard to imagine the force of will she'd used to bind a demon, or the cold precision with which he'd seen her fight. But even here, he realised, watching as she tipped back her head, her eyes closing as she listened to whoever was on the other end of the line, she radiated a fierce competency that felt like a contradiction of his memories of the times they'd talked, the rare moments he'd heard uncertainty in her voice, the tentative comfort she'd offered in a response to a need he hadn't been even able to acknowledge.

He looked down at the file in front of him and swallowed against the unidentifiable but powerful emotions he could feel building like a vortex in his gut. He thought he'd abandoned hope but apparently, hope hadn't left the building.

A way to kill Lilith, to save Sam, to save himself.

It was too big, he thought, trying to ignore the shiver that ran up his spine. He couldn't accept it just like that and he couldn't imagine how she'd put it all together. Three separate rituals, rituals neither his brother nor Bobby had been able to find. She had good contacts, he knew that from Bobby, but how much of her time had this taken? And money? And effort? She'd gone around the world to get these things, broken into places he wouldn't have attempted for a good cash profit, risked her life …

… _why_ had she put them together? To save him?

He shook his head disbelievingly, looking up as she closed her phone and dropped onto the bench seat on the other side of the table.

"There are a couple of possibilities, if Bobby can't find anything," she said, setting her cell on the table at her elbow and looking over at him. "I should get a call back in less an hour or so."

"Ellie …" He looked at her, trying to keep his face expressionless, not sure he was doing such a good job when he saw her look away. "This … this must have taken months of work; and your time … going to Israel … Turkey … why? Why'd you do this?"

She was silent for a moment, her gaze seemingly on the doorway on the other side of the room. He wondered what the hell he was missing as her face smoothed out to a neutral expression that he couldn't read at all.

"Because the world's a better place with you in it," she said lightly as she turned her head back to look at him.

"Yeah, it is …" he agreed, his mouth twisting up sardonically. "… but that's crap. Why?"

"Because I don't want you to die, Dean," she answered shortly, her gaze cutting away from him as she shrugged. The lightness had gone from her face, he could see the tiredness again. "Isn't that a good enough reason?"

He studied her for a long moment, still unable to read the expression on her face, or see past the shadows in her eyes; he sensed that it was the truth, just not necessarily the whole truth. Why would she do this for him? It didn't make sense.

"Bobby found a location," Sam interrupted, striding back across the sacristy to the table. "Church of the Holy Family, in Illinois. Built in 1799, it's been in continuous use since then."

"That's good, that will do," Ellie said, nodding slowly as she visibly calculated times and distances.

Dean felt a flash of frustration as he realised he wasn't going to get an answer from her now; he could see the switch, mentally changing tracks back to the emotionless state he recognised as her being back on the job.

"We can meet there on the morning of the 30th," she continued, her eyes distant a moment longer, then focussing on them. "It's going to take me a couple of days to get home, get everything together. Everything has to be absolutely ready by the time the moon rises, which is going to be late. The timing is critical."

"Wait a minute, split up? No. Not a good idea," Dean said, shaking his head as his gaze flicked from her to Sam. "If Lilith, or _any_ of the demons on her payroll find out about this, our lives won't be worth squat, they'll come for us, priority one. We're gunna have a better chance of getting this right if we stick together, until it's done."

Ellie rubbed the back of her neck. "Normally, I'd agree," she said, glancing unconsciously at her bag. "But I think it's safer to meet there than travel together. We'll less conspicuous. And I have to go back to Virginia first, to get everything from my place. It's a waste of your time to follow me there and back."

"Bobby said that he had something for us to see, anyway," Sam added another counter, looking at his brother. "We'll have the time to get to his place, which is where the demons will expect us to be, and keep their attention off Ellie while she gets what she needs."

Dean stared at him, his face screwing up a little as he recognised the validity of that point. He didn't feel happy about it, some instinct, something, was telling him that they'd be safer staying together. He just couldn't come up with a stronger argument for staying together that countered their arguments against it.

"Yeah," he agreed reluctantly, looking away from both of them. "Okay."

"So, run us through the details," Sam said to Ellie, sitting down again and drawing the file across the table. "All of it. If we know exactly what to expect, we won't make a mistake."

Glancing at Dean, Ellie nodded. "We start with moonrise," she said, reaching across to pull out the top pile of notes.

* * *

Dean walked out of the sacristy into the main hall of the church an hour later, driven out by a restlessness he couldn't control. The ritual sounded like it would work. He'd called Bobby and had the old hunter listen in on the second go-through, and Bobby'd agreed that thaumaturgically-speaking, it was covering all the bases. Demonkind was governed by its own rules just as everything else was.

The plan was simple enough. Each of them would do one of the rituals, the summoning beginning from moonrise, then the binding three hours later and the final ritual another three hours after that. The last ritual's timing would coincide with moonset. And Lilith would be … gone.

No more nightmares, he thought, leaning against the smooth wooden column by the font and staring unseeingly at the darkness outside through the stained glass windows. No more demons trying to turn Sammy into a monster. The rest of the hellspawn leaderless and in chaos and, he hoped, too worried about Hell to think about anything else.

It was still fucking impossible to believe.

* * *

Sam looked at the woman sitting opposite him, her head bent over the file. "Where'd you go? Why didn't you let us know what you were doing?"

Ellie looked up at him, her expression a little apologetic. "I met my contact, and what she gave me needed some answers," she said. "I tried to call but it must've been around the same time as you were in Cold Oak and I couldn't get through. Then I was in Europe for months, trying to find out if it was connected with you and Dean."

"If what was connected?" he asked, frowning as a memory snagged at him with the question.

"She had a document – an unbelievable document," Ellie said, rubbing the heel of her hand against her forehead. "It was a prophecy, from a demon in Hell. It'd been translated into Greek by the time Bela acquired it." She looked at him. "A part of it talked of an army of demons, led by a human."

Sam blinked at the name. "Bela? Bela Talbot? She was your contact?"

Ellie nodded.

"You know she died?" Sam asked, his forehead wrinkling up, remembering the way his brother's anger with the dealer had dissolved into a tired resignation when he'd spoken to her on the phone. "She'd made a deal?"

"I knew she'd made a deal," Ellie said quietly. "I didn't know her time was up until I got back."

"She stole the Colt," Sam said, a little distractedly. He ran a hand through his hand, pushing it off his forehead as he refocussed on her. "We might've been able to save her – and Dean – if she hadn't."

Ellie's smile was understanding. "She didn't trust anyone, Sam," she said quietly. "She couldn't've trusted you and Dean."

He nodded, wondering at the faint regret in her tone, wondering if Ellie had tried to convince the amoral Bela that the brothers she'd alternatively mocked and helped could've saved her. He pushed the thoughts aside. It was a long way too late now.

"And, uh, the prophecy … you thought that was me?"

"It seemed that was Azazel's goal," she said, taking a deep breath. "The prophecy talked of a war between two demons but it didn't make a lot of sense, especially with what's been happening. There're demons out among us, but we were seeing that increase long before the gate was opened. And why a human leader, Sam?"

He shook his head, remembering the demon's words. "He talked about a leader for his army, but he didn't say why. He let it slip that there were 'other generations' as well. You think this was – what? Some kind of diversion?"

"I'm not sure," Ellie admitted unwillingly. "What's happened here, I mean, with Azazel and Lilith, and now this business about you being the only one who can kill her – I don't know how that fits into the rest at all. Or even if it does."

Sam frowned as the memory came back to him. "Ellie, the demon we questioned about Lilith, he said that Lilith wanted Dean in Hell – why would she?"

Ellie straightened up, staring at him. "I don't know."

At the back of her mind, something prickled against the things she knew, the things she'd found out. It teased and prodded her but wouldn't come clear.

"What else did it say?" she asked, forcing herself to leave it alone, to let it simmer away on its own.

"Nothing, uh," Sam said, hesitating as he thought of Ruby. Dean had obviously trusted her enough to mention the demon. "There's another demon. Ruby."

He saw Ellie's eyes narrow slightly as her attention sharpened on him.

"She turned up after the gate was opened," he told her. "Said she was going to help us to destroy Lilith."

"A demon … offering to help destroy another demon," Ellie said doubtfully.

Sam nodded. "I know, we've been through that whole process too," he said. "The thing is, she's been helping us the last few months, saved Dean's life, saved mine, got us out of some pretty bad situations."

"And she says she wants to help you defeat Lilith?"

"That's what she says."

Ellie looked down at the table top, turning over what he was saying, and the belief in the demon she could sense in him. "I've heard of demons manipulating people, lying to get them to believe what they're doing is for the right reasons, for a – a good ending."

Sam sighed. "I know. I've heard it too."

"What does she want you to do?" she asked, and Sam looked away.

"The psychic powers?" Ellie guessed, seeing the line of tension in the man's shoulders. "She wants you to develop them?"

He nodded, glancing back at her uncertainly. "Dean says it'll turn me into a - into something – something not human," he said. "He won't even listen to her."

"Maybe he's right," Ellie said softly. "You know the story of the Monkey's Paw, right?"

Sam ducked his head, his eyes closing. "Yeah, but what if she's right, Ellie? What if I could fight her? And win?"

Ellie let out her breath in a slow exhale, looking down at the file between them. "Hopefully, this way, you won't have to."

"You don't think I should trust Ruby."

"I don't think anyone should trust any demon under any circumstances," she told him, her voice holding an edge as she lifted her gaze to meet his.

"Because of what happened to your partner?" Sam asked, wincing inwardly when he saw the flash of pain cross her face.

"Because of what Michael told me about demons and Hell in general," she corrected him, a little stiffly. "The transformation from human soul, however corrupted, to demon is a long one and the main thing it involves is the cauterisation of remorse, Sam. Demons don't feel it. Ever."

She looked at the doorway to the church. "What happened to you two?"

Sam pushed aside the sense of foreboding her advice had raised as he followed her gaze to the door. She was asking about his brother, he knew, more than him.

"Not long after you left, the demon brought all the special children together, at Cold Oak," he said, his gaze dropping as he held off those memories. "The idea was we'd kill each other until there was only one left and Yellow Eyes would use whoever that was to open the gate and lead his army. Jake and I were the only ones left, and I let him live." He cleared his throat, and looked at her. "He didn't have the same compunction as I did. Apparently he stabbed me in the back and I died."

"And Dean made a deal."

"And Dean made a deal," Sam agreed softly. "One year, any double-crossing and I'd drop dead."

Ellie listened to him talk about it, feeling that prickle at the back of her mind again. Had Hell really wanted Sam? Or his brother?

"What was Jake's ability?"

Sam stared at her, wondering why she'd asked that. "Uh, he had a – a kind of a super-strength. He'd been a soldier, in Afghanistan," he told her, the details coming back.

Her gaze cut away for a moment. "The gate was in Colt's pentacle, wasn't it? In Wyoming?"

He nodded. "At the centre, yeah."

"And the pentacle was iron tracks, railroad tracks?"

Nodding again, Sam studied her, trying to follow her thoughts. "Yeah, why?"

"If you'd killed Jake, if it'd been you standing alone at the end of it, you couldn't have broken the tracks, could you?"

It felt like a hammer blow against him, and Sam's mouth dropped open as he looked at her. He'd never even thought of how that would've gone down, him killing Jake. When they found the point where Jake had lifted the tracks, the iron rail had been bent upward, twisted aside. He couldn't have done it on PCP, let alone stone-cold sober.

As if she'd read his thoughts, Ellie continued, "Did Jake have a family, Sam? Someone that made him vulnerable to threats?"

"He didn't say anything about that," Sam said, trying to remember what the soldier had told him.

"What happened?" she asked, looking at him intently, and he got the feeling she'd already drawn conclusions that he and his brother hadn't thought of.

"After I – after I came to, we went to Bobby's. Ellen showed up, shaken about the roadhouse," he said, his eyes screwing shut as he forced it all out. "Ash had figured the target was Colt's cemetery in Sunrise – it seemed to be why the roadhouse was torched, to kill him before he could tell us – and we drove out there to wait for Jake. He came in on foot, a while after we'd gotten there, with the Colt." He opened his eyes to look at her. "The Colt was the key, to the gate."

She nodded and he frowned as he remembered standing there, hearing the disbelief in Jake's voice when he'd seen him.

"He, uh, he made Ellen hold her gun to her head, before anyone could shoot him –" He winced at the memory. "Before I could kill him," he amended, looking down at the table. "Then he opened the gate."

"He knew all about it?"

Sam nodded, the scene vivid in his mind's eye. "Seemed like it."

"So Azazel had prepped him," Ellie said. "And, I guess, had threatened him with something powerful enough to stop him from using the Colt to just kill him?"

Again, Sam felt a curious doubling of his memories as he considered the demon's plans. Yellow Eyes had to have known that he couldn't be manipulated into opening the gate. Had to have known that if he gave Sam Winchester the Colt, the first bullet would've gone straight for his head.

"I don't think Azazel was rooting for you to be the one to survive, Sam," Ellie said softly. "And I don't think that opening the gate was the main reason behind all of this."

"Then what?" Sam looked at her, feeling a trickle of icy dread creep up the back of his neck as the pieces moved together in his mind.

"I don't know," she said, the small crease back between her brows. "But maybe they knew what Dean would do."

He stared at her, knowing what she was referring to, the cold feeling invading his chest. "Why?"

For a long moment she seemed not to hear the question, her eyes distant and unfocussed, then she shook her head and looked back up at him. "The prophecy Bela had – look, it might be nothing, it might not even come to anything if we get this done right."

"But –?" he prompted her, his expression drawn. "If we don't? Why would they want Dean in Hell? They didn't care about him at all before!"

"I don't have enough information, Sam," she said, closing her eyes in frustration. "The prophecy refers to Lucifer and Heaven."

"What?"

"It talks about Heaven reaching down – and the seals to the ninth level – I don't know if that has anything to do with –" she started to say, stopping as Dean interrupted from the doorway.

"You want to get a room and stay tonight, Sammy? There's a place a couple of blocks south. We could finish this up with, uh, some food? I'm starving."

Ellie and Sam turned around to look at him, and Ellie nodded. "Yeah, I could eat."

She pushed the file toward Sam. "Keep it, it's a copy."

"Are you staying, Ellie?" Sam asked, the question loaded.

"For something to eat, sure," she said, glancing at him in acknowledgement. "I'll go after."

"Don't you ever sleep?" Dean asked, his brows drawing together.

She lifted the bulky leather pack onto one shoulder and smiled at him. "When there's time."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

* * *

_**April 25, 2008. Windsor, Connecticut.**_

The motel had a couple of vacancies left, and Dean came back to the car with a key, glancing over the roof at the white pickup waiting behind it. He got in and drove to the door, leaning over as Sam got out.

"What do you want to eat?"

"Anything," Sam said, pulling out the canvas duffels and gear bag from the back seat. "Hot and fast."

"No problem."

He threw the key to his brother and Sam closed the passenger door, watching as he reversed back and stopped to ask Ellie what she wanted.

She slid out of the pickup and walked to the room door as Sam dropped the bags inside.

"You think this was all orchestrated to get Dean?" he said without preamble as he crossed to the door and shut it behind her.

"Sam, I told you, Hell doesn't plan," she said, taking the canister of salt he passed and walking to the windows.

"Someone's doing something behind the scenes," he grated as he laid out a line along the threshold.

"I'm not arguing," she told him. "The bottom line is that we have a way to circumvent it all, no matter who planned it or how long-range that plan was."

He put the salt down, slumping into a chair at the small table near the windows. "You're sure this'll work?"

"Yeah, I'm sure." She capped the canister as she finished the line in front of the vent. "What happened with Gordon?"

"You heard about that?" he asked, surprised.

"Hunters talk," she said with a shrug, putting the salt on the counter and dropping into the chair opposite him. "And he was left."

Sam nodded. "We didn't want anyone with a vengeful streak on our asses," he told her. "Thought it'd be better if they saw he'd turned."

"Well, the story is that he turned and 'some hunter' got him," she said, looking at him. "So it worked. No one raised your names."

"How'd you know then?"

"I heard about the run in you two had with him last year," she said. "I didn't think it was likely he'd let bygones be bygones."

He snorted. "Yeah, well, you sure got that right." Rubbing both hands over his face, he shook his head, adding almost to himself, "It came at a bad time. The whole year's been bad, to tell you the truth."

"Was there something specific?" Ellie asked.

"After the sin-demons, we were mostly trying to find the other demons that'd escaped, you know, and Dean found a case in the same town as an old girlfriend was living," he said. "It was a changeling case and the girlfriend – Lisa – she had a son, and he got taken. I don't know everything that happened there, but it hit him hard. He said she asked him to stay for a while."

He remembered his brother's expression, coming out of the house and getting into the car. It'd been … fragile, he thought, a slightly deprecatory smile hiding a lot behind it. When he'd asked what'd happened, Dean had brushed it off mostly, but the smile had slipped and his brother hadn't mentioned it again.

"He told her no, but I think he regretted it," Sam said.

"He loves her?" Ellie asked, and he looked at her for a moment before shaking his head.

"Not the impression I got," he said. "But yeah, maybe. I thought it was something else."

"He wants a family?"

He nodded, surprised at her guess. "Hard to believe, but yeah," he said, his expression sobering as his father's words came back to him abruptly. _I want you to go to school. I want Dean to have a home. I want – I want Mary alive_.

"I think that was the thing that was taken from him and he can't let go of what it meant to him," he said, leaning his chin on his hand as he thought about it. "Even back before Dad died, he didn't want me to go back to school. Wanted us to be a family again, even though I think he knew it couldn't work like that again."

"But he told, uh, Lisa, that he couldn't because of what's coming, where he thought he was going?"

"Yeah, he wouldn't put that on them, not just for a few months of peace for himself," Sam said. "But he got reckless after that, like there wasn't any point to him living out even the year he'd got."

"You thought he gave up?"

"Yeah," Sam admitted. "Yeah, I know he did. He didn't tell me about the deal – the no-getting-out-of-it part until a couple of months later, but I could see he wasn't trying."

He looked curiously at her. "You went to a lot of trouble to put all this together, Ellie," he said, watching her face. "Do you care about him?"

"I care about both of you," she said, her tone casual. "Of course, I also have a minor stake in making sure the world doesn't get overrun by hellspawn if this is a plan to somehow use you and your brother to further demon plans on earth, so I wouldn't put too much stock in my altruism."

He smiled a little, his eyes thoughtful. "Yeah, maybe."

* * *

_**Two hours later.**_

"We'll be at the church at six," Sam said to Ellie as she opened the driver's door of the pickup and climbed in.

"I'll see you there," she said, closing the door and leaning her elbow on the open window. "If there's any kind of hold up, I'll leave a message."

He nodded, glancing at his brother. Dean was hunched up, his hands in his pockets, his gaze distant as he looked down the street. "It'll work, right?"

Ellie turned to look at Dean's drawn face. "Yeah, it's going to work."

They stepped back as she started the engine and pulled quietly away from the kerb, watching the red taillights until she turned the corner and they disappeared. Sam felt his nerves thrumming with tension and wondered how his brother could be standing there, seemingly unmoved by what was coming.

"You alright?"

Dean blinked and turned to look at him. "Yeah, fine," he said, seeming to break free of whatever he'd been thinking about.

"You want to head straight for Bobby's in the morning?" Sam asked as they walked back to room.

His brother nodded. It was a twenty-two hour drive, give or take an hour or two either way.

Sam wondered if he should tell Dean about Ellie's theories. Not theories, he corrected himself, ideas. She didn't have anything other than a series of possible coincidences and gut instinct to go on, he thought, any more than he did. And his brother looked like he'd enough shocks for one day.

What'd Yellow Eyes really been planning? he wondered as he pulled off his clothes and threw them over a chair near bed he'd claimed. A demon army against Hell and earth? Or a way to manipulate a single man into doing something he'd been virtually trained to do from childhood?

_So, Dean ... I gotta thank you. You see, demons can't resurrect people, unless a deal is made. I know, red tape— it'll make you nuts. But thanks to you, Sammy's back in rotation. Now, I wasn't counting on that, but I'm glad. I liked him better than Jake, anyhow._

The memory of the old cemetery came back to him, the gate open and charcoal smoke, flickering shades and a dry, roasting heat blasting through the tombstones, his back and neck aching where he'd hit the tree. The demon hadn't sounded like it was planned, he thought, dragging the covers back and sliding beneath them, his hand reaching out to flick off the lamp.

_You, of all people, should know that's what's dead should stay dead. Anyway ... thanks a bunch. I knew I kept you alive for some reason. Until now, anyway. I couldn't have done it without your pathetic, self-loathing, self-destructive desire to sacrifice yourself for your family._

How much had Yellow Eyes counted on Dean doing exactly what he did? He couldn't have broken the tracks, not even with the telekinesis he'd used just once and couldn't call on demand anyway, and he wouldn't've opened the gate, no matter what the demon had threatened or promised. And he was still sure the demon had known that.

_Demons can't resurrect people_. Had it gone to Jake and brought him out of unconsciousness to finish the job, knowing Dean and Bobby had been right there? Knowing … knowing what, he asked himself furiously? What had the demon known? Not that Dean would have the Colt. Not that John Winchester would fight his way out of Hell and hold it long enough for his son to kill it. No, it hadn't known that.

Ellie was right, he thought. The demons hadn't known how it would happen. They hadn't planned and plotted it all the way through. Some of them, at least, had been played as expertly as his family had.

_The cost of doing business, I'm afraid. I mean, sweet little Jessica – she just had to die. You were all set to marry that little blonde thing, become a tax lawyer with two kids, a beer gut, and a little McMansion in the suburbs. I needed you sharp, on the road, honing your skills._

The demon had told him plainly enough, he thought. At the time he'd been too shocked to hear what was behind the words. The cost of doing business. Everyone expendable, the end justifies the means … they'd killed Jess deliberately, just to keep him from veering off-track.

Rolling onto his side, he stared at the dim shape of the curtains covering the window, his fears and doubts coalescing into a single question.

Had he just been bait for them to get his brother to make a deal?

* * *

Dean lay on his back, listening to his brother rolling restlessly in the other bed until Sam's breathing eased and he heard the soft whistle signifying that he was finally asleep.

He didn't know what Sam and Ellie had been talking about while he'd been outside the church, but he'd recognised his brother's agitation when he'd stopped in the doorway to the sacristy, had seen that the tension hadn't dissipated after Ellie had gone.

It was possible, he thought, that Sam was just worried about the ritual, about getting it right. It was possible, but he didn't think that's what it was. Ellie had looked worried about something as well, and more tellingly, she'd looked uncertain, something he hadn't seen so much with her.

He'd read through the file and her notes briefly, making a mental note of the traps he hadn't seen before, skimming over the document she'd gotten from Bela. _When a righteous man sheds blood in Hell_. He stared at the ceiling, wondering at the impossibility of that. What would a righteous man be doing in Hell?

Sam had said that Yellow Eyes couldn't've wanted him to win. He'd argued that he couldn't've opened the pentacle and that the demon would never've given him the gun. He could remember the demon's mocking words all too easily.

… _your pathetic, self-loathing, self-destructive desire to sacrifice yourself for your family …_

It'd been right, he thought. Bobby'd seen it, had nearly broken down over his choice. Ellie'd told him she'd been surprised, and somewhere down deep, he squirmed a little, wondering what she thought of him now, knowing that about him.

_Protect your brother! If you can't save him, you'll have to kill him_.

He'd spent his life trying to follow that first order. He couldn't follow the second.

When he'd made the deal, he'd thought, in some back-to-front-assed way, it would fix the balance. Sam would live, as he was supposed to. He would die, as he should've. His father was free of Hell, and his mother had been freed of her self-imposed imprisonment in their old house. Things would be … not right, he couldn't bring himself to lie that much to himself … but he'd thought that his brother would at least be safe. Ruby had detonated that idea effectively.

_You need to help me get him ready – for life without you. To fight this war on his own._

He'd known right then that he'd made the wrong choice, that his idea had been futile from the beginning and he was leaving his brother in worse danger than he ever had before. Leaving him alone.

Not alone, he thought, turning onto his side. Sammy would have Bobby, and Rufus. And Ellie … he'd meant to talk to her. To ask her to help Sam if it didn't work out for him. There hadn't been time. He would talk to her at the church, he decided. Before they started.

The thought of it unnerved him, asking her for any more than she'd already given them. He didn't, as a rule, ask for help from anyone. He didn't know why the usual rules didn't seem to apply to her.

He yawned, his eyes squeezing shut as his body gave up on the struggle to stay awake.

* * *

_**April 26, 2008. US-30 W, Ohio**_

Sam opened the door, handing his brother a paper sack of food, the smells of burger and fries seeping out and filling the car as he slid into his seat clutching his own bag and closed the door behind him.

Dean opened the bag and pulled out the foil-wrapped food, unwrapping it and eating fast.

"You sure you want to just keep going till we get there?" Sam asked him, picking up the soda and sucking a mouthful down through the straw.

Dean hesitated, finishing the burger and wadding up the wrapping. Sam could take the stretch across Illinois and Iowa, it would give him enough of a break to keep going.

"Yeah, we can crash when we get there," he decided, reaching for the ignition key. The engine rumbled into life and he pulled out, following the highway west.

"Where'd Ellie say she had to go?" he asked, an hour later.

"Richmond. Virginia," Sam answered absently, looking up from the laptop on his knees. "She's got an apartment there."

"Right."

Sam glanced sideways at the short response, unable to read Dean's mood from his profile as his brother stared fixedly at the road.

"What?"

Dean threw a look at him and shook his head. "Nothing."

* * *

_**April 27, 2008. Richmond, Virginia.**_

Ellie had almost reached her street when she became aware, again, that something was observing her. She hauled the wheel left, the pickup's tyres smoking as she cut across the moving traffic, horns blaring in outrage behind her, and took the cross street out of her neighbourhood and across town.

Whatever it was, she thought as she put her foot down to make the chain of green lights, it was persistent and it had some way of following her that wasn't visual. The sense prickled at her through the city and onto the highway, fading away sometimes but always returning.

Pulling into the kerb fifteen minutes later, she turned off the engine and jumped out, walking fast up the street and shoving open the door of a bookstore, halfway along the block.

A bell clanged as she stepped in, several customers' heads snapping up and eyeing her with disapproval. Behind the service counter, the bookstore's owner took one look at her and jerked her head toward the door at the rear of the store, reaching under the counter to press a small button.

Nodding at the grey-haired man as she swept through the store, Ellie arrived at the door at the same moment it opened, and walked through without stopping. The door closed behind her, and she felt a hand drop onto her shoulder.

"What's wrong?"

In the dim light of the back hall, Ellie couldn't see the face of the woman who spoke, but she knew the voice well.

"I'm being followed," she said shortly, obeying the nudge to keep walking as Katherine walked on her heels. "Not a who, a what."

"You're sure?"

"Let's call it, ninety-percent," Ellie told her with a grimace, glancing back at the other woman as they walked past the store-rooms and into a wide room that was filled with sunlight, bookshelves lining the walls and a number of comfortable sofas and chairs scattered loosely around a long, low table.

"Where's Fionnula?" Ellie asked as Katherine waved a hand toward the seating.

"She married Iain," the older woman said repressively, going to a large dresser tucked in between the bookshelves and opening a drawer. "They went to San Francisco, presumably so she could wear flowers in her hair," she added, her voice tart as she slammed the drawer with her hip and turned around.

"A little late for that, isn't it?" Ellie asked, sitting down on the sofa and looking back at her.

"I would've thought so, but my daughter believes in peculiar things."

Ellie restrained herself from commenting on that. "Are they happy?"

Katherine set the handful of candles, silk cloth and small, cloth sachets of herbs she'd retrieved from the drawer on the table and sniffed. "She says they are."

She spread the hand-painted silk across the table and picked up a silver knife, using the tip to open each of the sachets. "She's a child – what does she know of love?"

"Ah," Ellie prevaricated. "Perhaps she's ready to put away childish things."

"Don't take her side!" Katherine said, tipping the herbs into a bowl and looking up her. "You were supposed to be here to help me convince her that she was making a mistake."

"Sorry," Ellie offered, her gaze dropping to the table.

"Sorry … as if that helps," Katherine muttered. She moved the candles to the corners of the silk and lit them, leaning forward. "Give me your hands."

The candle flames flickered and bent in an unfelt draught then straightened as Katherine lit the herbs in the small iron bowl and took Ellie's hands in her own.

Both women sat completely still, eyes closed, their breathing slow and regular, their heartbeats aligning until they beat in the same slow rhythm. Ellie felt the air thicken in the room, the scents of the burning herbs filling her senses, blocking out everything.

A moment later she felt Katherine release her, and she opened her eyes groggily, looking across the table to see the other woman leaning back, the table cleared of the magical implements and the angle and direction of the light changed in the room.

Katherine looked at her. "You are being followed."

Restraining her impatience, Ellie lifted a brow at her quizzically.

"Nothing minor," Katherine continued, looking closely at her. "Just an entity from the Divine plane."

"An angel?" Ellie's eyes widened at her.

"What have you been doing lately?"

Her gaze cutting to one side, Ellie shook her head. "It's a long story."

"And one you think I'll disapprove of," Katherine pointed out acerbically.

"You might," Ellie agreed lightly, looking back at her. "What can I do about it?"

"Depends. If you're involved in something they don't believe is seemly, they'll just send another, if you banish it."

Ellie frowned. "Well, what I'm doing isn't something that Heaven should be taking an interest in at all, but for some reason they seem to be. Can we trap it?"

"That's a lot more work than just a banishing, Ellie," the older woman told her. "What do you want to know?"

"Why I'm under surveillance, for one thing," Ellie said.

Katherine nodded. "Alright, we need to wait for closing, I'll need Seb's help for this."

* * *

It was after midnight when the trap was ready and Ellie walked out through the bookstore and turned down the street for the lane, feeling a growing attention on her as she hurried to the corner.

Pulling out her cell, she slowed as she turned into the lane, walking along the back fences of the stores that took up the block.

"Sam?" she said quietly into the phone. "I'm here, but I'll need a few more hours … right … no, I think we'll still be there …"

Stopping in front of the bookstore's back gate, she nodded and said, "Give me at least two extra hours …"

She opened the gate and walked through, closing it behind her. The long, narrow paved yard was maybe thirty yards to the back of the building and she stopped again halfway along, head bowed as she pretended to listen.

"No, it'll be fine," she said. "No one knows and we'll be done before they can stop us."

She walked quickly toward the rear door, turning as a bright and burning light filled the yard behind her. In the centre of the circle of flaming holy oil, a man stood, pivoting slowly on one heel. On either side of the circle, Katherine and Sebastian's faces were lit by the golden flames and Ellie walked back to the edge of the fire.

"Why are you following me?"

* * *

_**April 28, 2008. I-80 W, Iowa**_

"I don't think it's a good idea for both of us to be there," Dean said, trying to keep his voice reasonable, despite an increasing irritation with Sam's pigheadedness.

"There're three rituals, Dean," Sam said, shooting a sideways look at him as his hands tightened on the Impala's wheel. "That's gonna take three."

"We can handle it without you." Dean looked out the passenger window. "If anything goes wrong, and we don't get Lilith, she'll have the perfect opportunity to kill you."

"Nothing's gonna go wrong," Sam said, his voice tight.

Along the road in front of the car, the lines were fading as dusk fell and Sam flicked on the headlights, his brow furrowed.

"I'm not sitting at Bobby's waiting for you to get back," he added to his brother. "We do this together – or not at all."

"Alright," Dean said, giving up and leaning his head against the window. He didn't want to fight anymore. Glancing at his watch, he said, "Next exit, pull off and we'll switch."

"Okay."

* * *

_**Richmond, Virginia**_

Ellie opened the door to her apartment, dumping her bags on the floor as she closed it behind her, and pulling off her clothes as she headed straight for the bathroom.

The angel had been surprised by the trap, surprised he'd been discovered. He'd told them his mission was simply to observe what she did, where she went, who she'd spoken to. On the suggestion that he might spend a long time in the ring of fire, he'd been more forthcoming.

"_My order's were from Uriel,"_ he'd told her. _"To follow you and learn of what you knew about the Winchesters."_

She'd felt Katherine's interest pique at that and had hurriedly asked the angel what an archangel wanted with a couple of human hunters.

"I don't know," he'd said, his vessel's grey eyes candid on hers. "The orders were clear and I obeyed. The sword does not question the wielder."

They'd left it in the circle and gone inside, through the back of the store. There was nothing Katherine had or could get in a short time frame to prevent the servants of Heaven from seeing her and finding her. She'd left and Katherine and Seb had freed the angel, presumably, although she hadn't felt the crawling sensation of eyes on her since.

The hot water beat down on her skin and she washed absently, rinsing the days' of travel grime from her hair and body, her mind engaged in pulling in the pieces of information she had and arranging and rearranging them into whatever configurations she could.

_Heaven reaches down as Hell reaches up_, she thought. She'd told Patrick it would only take a single arch to be able to manipulate the demons and humans into whatever it wanted, although why any angel would want the cage of the devil unsealed was something she couldn't guess at.

_When a Righteous man sheds blood in Hell_ … the prophecy ran through her thoughts again. Was Dean the Righteous man, she wondered uneasily? Why else would they've manipulated the events the way they had?

She stood unmoving beneath the gushing flow, staring at the white tiles in front of her. Righteous wasn't the first word that came into her mind when she thought of him, and yet he was, she realised slowly. He'd given up his soul and his life for his brother's sake, an act of self-sacrifice that was usually marked on the soul. He'd spent his entire life trying to save people, not always succeeding but always trying. He and his father and his brother had fought evil in ways most people couldn't even have conceived.

Turning off the taps, she felt a shiver run through her as she considered what she knew of him. He was intensely private, even, she thought, with his family. Loyal. Courageous. Very good at what he did because he never gave up and he never gave in.

_The target of a plot between Heaven and Hell to break the first Seal?_

_Stop it_, she told herself, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around herself as she stepped out of the shower cubicle. _What we're doing will prevent it going any further, even if that was the plan for Dean_.

He would be free of his contract the second Lilith crumbled back into the earth from which she was made. No one could use him then.

Drying herself briskly, she forced her thoughts back to what she had to do, what she had to prepare. It was a twelve-hour drive to Illinois and she wanted to leave first thing in the morning and get to Cahokia by nightfall.

* * *

_**I-29 N, Nebraska**_

He heard his brother's soft snores as Sam crunched himself into the corner between the seat and the door and somehow managed to sleep there.

_Don't believe in it until it's happened_, he cautioned himself, his gaze fixed to the road that was a stark black and white in the darkness and headlights. _Don't feel, don't hope, just wait_.

It was good advice, he thought. He didn't know if he could take it.

_After everything I've done for this family, I think I'm entitled. Truth is, I'm tired, Sam. I don't know, it's like there's a, a light at the end of the tunnel._

He couldn't remember what'd been going through his head when he'd said that to his little brother. Couldn't remember why it'd seemed like it would be the end, instead of what it was really going to be.

Giving up hadn't been in his vocabulary, and giving up without a fight had been an unknown concept. He knew he'd wanted a way out, if he could somehow ensure his brother's safety. Sam'd been the only reason he'd fought his way out of the djinn's dreamworld, the only reason he'd tried to come back. That world hadn't been his life, either, he'd come to realise a lot later. But he'd wanted to stay.

At the time, the choice had seemed inevitable. He'd ignored the knowledge of how Sam would feel about it, and what his father would've felt about it, and he buried his fear about the actuality of what he'd condemned himself to under layers of rationalisations of Sam being able to go back to a normal life, to the life he'd wanted.

Only it'd been increasingly obvious that Sam wasn't going to be allowed to do that. And Ruby's confession had driven that home all the way.

He drew in a deep breath, forcing it out and pulling in another. All of that was going to be undone, he thought. Somehow the impossible had become possible.

* * *

_**Sioux Falls, South Dakota**_

The house was cold, and it felt empty, Dean thought as he dropped onto the sofa under the window. Ellen and Jo had gone, a week ago, Bobby'd said. They were living mostly out of Ellen's four-wheel drive, moving around and hunting together. He hadn't realised how much having them there had softened Bobby's temper, or made the old house seem more like a home.

"Alright," Bobby said from behind the desk. "I agree with Sam. Each one of those rituals is a tricky son-of-a-bitch an' there's no percentage to risking the job now."

Looking over at him, his eyes half-closed, Dean shrugged. "Yeah."

"The rest of it – what'd Ellie say about that prophecy?" The old hunter looked from one man to the other.

"She didn't, really," Sam told him, glancing at Dean. "We were more focussed on how to get rid of Lilith."

Catching the slight hesitation in his brother's voice, Dean looked over at him, wondering what he and Ellie had been talking about in the church. "She thought that the opening of the gate, the whole special children thing was a diversion," he said, lifting a brow at Sam.

"What?"

Sam ducked his head, looking down at his hands. "The demon said it wanted a leader for its army," he said slowly, his gaze flicking up to Bobby briefly, seeing the old man nod in acknowledgement. "It told Jake the same thing, apparently. But there was no way I could've opened those tracks, Bobby. And no way that I would've used the gun to open the gate."

Bobby's face was hidden by the shadow of his cap as he looked down at the file on the desk. "So, it wanted Jake to win?"

"I think it needed Jake to win," Sam said. "For two reasons. To open the gate," he paused, and Dean saw his hands tighten into fists on his lap. "And to force Dean into making the deal."

"To make sure he went to Hell?"

"Yeah."

Dean shook his head uneasily. "For what?"

Sam's gaze lifted to meet his. "I don't know. Ellie didn't know. She said that Hell didn't plan, wasn't organised, but that someone was."

Pushing aside the thought of being manipulated into giving up his soul, Dean forced a snort as he recalled the notes in the file. "Angels? C'mon, you're not serious."

Bobby raised a brow at him and shrugged. "There's plenty of lore on 'em."

"There's plenty of lore on fairies too," Dean said caustically, getting to his feet in irritation. "Haven't run across any of them either."

He walked out of the room, turning down the hall to go out into the yard. Demons he'd seen plenty of, had heard about through other hunters, had exorcised and dealt with himself. Angels were myth. There was no God, he thought as he walked down the porch steps and along the gravelled drive toward the workshops. If there was, he would've done something about the mess and chaos of the world.

He stopped abruptly in front of a row of junkers, tucking his head down as a rill of nervousness trickled through him again. He couldn't think of a reason that he'd be of any interest to demonkind, other than what they were about to attempt. Maybe Sam and Ellie'd had gotten it wrong, somehow, he thought. Maybe Yellow Eyes had thought he could convince Sam to be the leader of his army if he'd killed Jake, instead of the soldier killing him.

_It's not my life_, he'd said to Lisa, thinking of where he was going. If they pulled this off, could it be his life, he wondered? Another chance? To do something different, to walk away from hunting and become someone else?

He closed his eyes, breathing deeply. Who would he be if he wasn't a hunter?

_You don't know anything about me_ … he'd said it and he'd pulled away from the comfort of her touch, and the memory of his voice, harsh and trying to hurt, came back, making him cringe a little.

Opening his eyes, he looked at the dark shadow of the Impala, against the blackness of the interior of the shed. _You're right_, she'd agreed instantly. _I'm sorry_. He hadn't been right, he thought, rubbing a hand over his face. He'd reacted because he'd been scared because she had known him, had known how he'd felt, not even just the things he'd let out, but the things he'd kept inside as well. He hadn't known how, had just felt … unarmoured and weak … sitting there beside her, hearing her tell him the truth.

If they pulled this off, it would be different, he thought. He would have a future and a second chance for a lot of things.

* * *

_**April 29, 2008. Richmond, Virginia**_

Ellie's gaze tracked around the apartment quickly, a last check that she'd remembered everything, had gotten everything that would be needed. In the wooden chest now sitting in the tray of the pickup, the quantities of the herbs, powders, candles and oils was doubled, just in case. Four gallons of fresh lamb's blood, in screw-top containers, were tucked into a cooler next to it. In her pack, a copy of the full file, the scrolls and bowls and earth had been wrapped and sealed, padded against any impact.

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. She was ready.

She'd arrive at the church around five in the morning, if nothing unforeseen happened, the hour's buffer before their meeting time intended to ensure that destiny couldn't take a hand at the last minute and screw up the plan. Picking up the bulky leather backpack, she slung one strap over her shoulder, and walked out of the apartment.

As she pulled the door close and locked it, she hesitated, her instincts prickling. Under observation, the angel had said. She was wearing two silver and iron pendants, a triquetra and the demon sigil of Astaroth. Both were protective, but the wrought shape of the sigil drew illusions and deflection to it as well. Looking around slowly, carefully, she wondered how efficacious it was as she saw nothing in the hallway, heard no untoward sounds from the block.

She didn't move, her hand still on the key in the lock and after a moment, the uncomfortable sensation vanished.

If they were in collusion with the demons, would they stop her, she wondered? Or the Winchesters? Katherine and Seb hadn't been able to come up with a single reason Heaven might have for wanting Lucifer released either. And letting the devil out seemed to be the only possible reason for anyone to want Dean in the pit.

The question was the answer, she told herself, frowning as she tried to force a connection between the pieces. She realised she wasn't sure of what exactly the question was.

Shifting the weight of her bag on her shoulder, she turned from the door and headed down the stairs.

* * *

_**I-64 W, Kentucky**_

Glancing at her watch, Ellie was relieved to see she was making good time. The pickup's tyres thrummed with urgency over the broad road, and a knot of tension had taken hold at the base of her neck as she went over and over the rituals in her mind, her eyes and hands and feet handling the vehicle and the traffic conditions without needing much thought.

Most churches, except for the most modern, held a residual power in their frames and foundations, the focussed prayers and hopes and sorrows and joys of those who'd poured their emotions outward. Everything left a trace, a track of itself, even thought, even feeling, and buildings, especially those of wood or stone, retained those traces. The church at Cahokia had been in use for over two hundred years. It was, relative to the places of worship in older countries, quite young, but still two hundred years of blood and tears would hold a powerful impact, she thought. None of the usual devices of the faith would hold a demon as powerful as Lilith. Holy water and salt, even iron, wouldn't be able to do much to her. The rituals were strong enough, but if she could key the circles to the emotions in the church, human emotions, given freely and with full hearts, it would make those rituals so much stronger.

The questions of angels would have to wait. She'd seen Dean's expression twitch when he'd read the file and the prophecy, had known that he didn't believe in the forces that opposed evil. He would have to learn to believe in them, she thought, because nothing in the universe existed without an equal and opposing force to hold the balance, and even after the contract was broken, they needed to find out why Heaven was so interested in them.

The memory of his face, perplexed and uncertain, rose unbidden in her mind's eye. _Why?_ he'd asked.

Changing lanes automatically as she overtook another car, she knew it was a question she couldn't answer for him, one that she didn't look at herself if she could help it. She didn't believe in it, didn't believe it could happen that way and she was doing her utmost to convince herself that what she'd felt – was feeling – meant nothing. Nothing more than a residual gratitude for an event long past. Nothing more than an ease of working together that happened sometimes fortuitously but signified very little else. Nothing more than a platonic and uninvolved compassion for a fellow hunter who needed help from time to time, even if he'd never ask for it.

The pretence worked fine most of the time and she was used to walling up the things that had no place in her life anyway. There was nothing she could do about it so she ignored it.

What she'd done, the lengths she'd gone to, were irrelevant, she told herself. If she could prevent his death, prevent him spending eternity in Hell, then she had to. There hadn't been a choice for her, any more than he'd had a choice to save Sam.

* * *

_**Sioux Falls, South Dakota.**_

Dean threw his bag into the back seat, turning around and looking for Sam. It was early, the sun was just rising in the east, the sky a pearlescent pale blue. Sam and Bobby came out, the screen door slamming behind them.

"You sure you don't want some backup?" The older hunter looked from Sam to Dean. "You'll be busy, 'nuther pair of eyes wouldn't go astray."

"Uh, yeah, thanks, but no." Dean shook his head. "If it all right, there won't be a need. If it doesn't …" He looked down at the ground then back up to the old man. "I don't need your death on me as well."

"It won't go wrong," Sam said, tossing his bag next to Dean's in the back seat. "We'll see you when we get back."

Bobby shrugged, his eyes crinkling up beneath the brim of his cap. "Yeah. Okay. Be careful." He turned away, then stopped. "And good luck."

Dean slid into the Impala, turning the key. The engine roared into life. He felt like putting his foot down to the metal and screaming away, but he restrained himself, turning slowly around in the narrow confines between the rows of junked cars, rumbling out of the yard at a moderate speed.

"You nervous?" Sam asked, turning to look at him.

Keeping his eyes on the road, he felt the corner of his mouth curving up. Nervous? No, nervous didn't exactly describe the torrents of anxiety, adrenal rush, worry, and fear that were racing along his nervous system and bombarding his brain. He doubted there was a word invented to describe the way he was feeling right now.

"Nah. What's to be nervous about?" he answered his brother flippantly, putting his foot down a little harder as they exited the drive and turned onto the asphalt.

"Right." Sam looked out the window. "I'm nervous."

Dean flicked a sideways glance at his brother. "Why?"

"Because … of everything. If it works, we've saved you and killed Lilith, and every demon out there will be chasing us from one side of the country to the other. That's not even counting all that stuff in Ellie's file, that we haven't even looked at yet," he said, running a hand jerkily through his hair. "If it doesn't …" he trailed off uncomfortably, not wanting to say out loud the thought that was in both of their minds.

"It'll work," Dean's voice was low and determined. "It'll work, Sammy, and we'll worry about what happens next afterwards, okay?"

"Yeah." Sam exhaled gustily, turning to stare out the window beside him.

"Why d'you think Ellie did all of this?" Dean asked, a little later as the car navigated the way out of Sioux Falls and onto the interstate, heading south.

Blinking in surprise at the question, Sam turned around in the seat, looking at his brother's profile.

"Didn't you ask that?"

"Yeah, she said she didn't want me to die," Dean told him, his tone flat.

"Then I guess that's why," Sam said.

"C'mon, Sammy, you saw how much – fucking – everything – this must've taken?"

He caught a glimpse of Sam's mouth, curving up derisively, in his peripheral vision as his brother said, "Geez, Dean, are you pissed she's trying to save your life?"

"No – no," he said, brows drawing together as he tried to work out what the hell it was he was feeling about it. "But, she found out in June, man, she worked on this nearly the whole year. I just – I don't – I mean …" he stumbled over what he was thinking, flicking a look at Sam. "I mean, why me?"

Sam let out an exhale, his gaze cutting away. "Maybe she knew you wouldn't try to save yourself?"

Dean stared at the road, knowing what Sam meant, the little dark bar coming back to him too easily.

_No, that's not what I mean. I mean … no one can save you, because you don't want to be saved. I mean … how can you care so little about yourself? What's wrong with you?_

Even if Bobby hadn't called at that precise moment, he hadn't had an answer for his brother. He had wanted to be saved. Just not at the cost of failing. Not at the cost of Sam dropping dead, a constant fucking mute reminder that he'd failed them all. He'd wanted to be saved but not at any cost. Not at that cost.

One job. His whole life. He couldn't've lived with himself. Down deep, where it was just him, not brother, not son, not even hunter, but just Dean, he thought he was never going to be strong enough or brave enough or good enough to do that job as well as his father could've. It drove him on, that fear, through pain and loss and uncertainty, but it took its toll on him with every mile, every tear and wound and scar.

He hadn't thought of the deal as his life being worth less than Sam's, specifically, he realised. He shouldn't have been here at all. That was the difference.

Glancing to his right, he saw Sam leaning against the passenger window, eyes half-open. He drew in a long, deep breath, lifting a hand from the wheel to rub the fingers over his eyes. He'd watched Ellie work, he knew that when she started something, she went all out until it was done, and done properly. It was one of the reasons he liked working with her, that full-throttle, diamond-hard attitude. It was also one of the reasons she could aggravate him, when he wanted to take a short-cut, or thought it would be faster to be a bit less anal and more spontaneous.

It wasn't that he thought his life wasn't worth the trouble she'd taken, he realised, turning onto the 70 as he bypassed Kansas City, it was that he couldn't imagine why it was worth that trouble to her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

* * *

_**1.00 pm. April 29, 2008. I-64 W, Indiana**_

Ellie had just passed through Elberfeld when her instincts began to prickle again. She checked her mirrors, glancing from side to side, her foot going down on the accelerator a little more.

There was little traffic on the 64, a few cars heading in the opposite direction, but no one on this side for miles. Gripping the wheel, she accelerated again, but the sensation of being watched, being followed, got worse.

"I have to tell you, I truly admire the extraordinary effort you've put in."

She started, the truck veering wildly to one side as she saw the man appear in the passenger seat in the corner of her eye. He put his hand to the dashboard, bracing himself against the vehicle's gyrations as she fought to get the truck straightened out and back on the highway.

"Who the hell are you?" she snapped when the truck was back in its lane, her gaze shifting to him after she'd checked the road front and behind and to either side.

An angel. Of course. The vessel was a big man, with a smooth, bald pate, his skin a rich, dark chocolate brown. He wore a navy suit, the crisp white of the shirt beneath contrasting vividly against his colouring. As he turned his head toward her, she saw the utter lack of interest in his face.

"I am Uriel."

"Uriel … as in the archangel, Uriel?" Ellie looked back at the road, her adrenalin-fuelled anger instantly wiped away by apprehension. "You don't look tall enough to be an angel."

"Humour. From a monkey. How … droll." He looked away, the corner of his mouth tucking in.

"What do you want?" she asked, her face impassive, her mind throwing up and rejecting options one after the other. He might laugh briefly if she crashed the car and killed herself, saving him the trouble, but that would be the extent of it.

"To stop you, of course," Uriel said chidingly, the tone of his voice disinterested. "I would have thought that was obvious."

"Not so much. Why?"

She didn't think he'd answer, didn't think he would do anything other than kill her, she was only buying a little more time, trying to think of anything she knew of that would get rid of an angel. She'd covered a lot of the lore since she'd first read Hell's prophecy, but nothing was coming to mind. And she didn't think she was going to get much time out of this.

"Because Dean Winchester has to go to Hell," the angel said softly, looking at her. From the corner of her eye, she saw a smile curving his mouth. "And no one is killing Lilith until the time is right."

She glanced at him. "Heaven reaches down as Hell reaches up?"

"My, my, you are well-informed," he said, one brow lifting. "Yes, in point of fact, we are done waiting and our time is now."

"Why does Dean have to go to Hell?"

If there's absolutely nothing else you can do, she thought, get whatever intel you can.

Uriel chuckled. "You've read the prophecy, you know why. He has to break the first Seal to Lucifer's cage, of course." The smile widened and she noted that it wasn't a nice smile. "Have I answered all your little monkey questions now? It really is time to go."

She flinched back against the driver's door as he reached out, but she had nowhere to go and he touched her shoulder, his hand clamping down hard.

* * *

_**5.00 pm. Cahokia, Illinois**_

"Next one's the exit." Sam pointed to the sign ahead. Dean eased the car into the right lane and they exited smoothly, slowing as he came into the little town. The late afternoon sun spilled through the buildings as he detoured around the retail district and followed Sam's lefts and rights toward the church.

"There's a motel, Dean."

Turning the wheel, the black car swung into the drive of the modest, single-storey motel, the gravel popping and crunching under the tyres as he stopped in front of the office. Sam got out, coming back ten minutes later with a key dangling from one finger.

"Around the back," he said, gesturing to where the drive curled around the building. "I'll see if Ellie's here yet."

Dean glanced at him as he pulled out his phone, letting the Impala crawl around the corner in first, parking precisely between the lines when he saw the room. He turned off the engine and looked at Sam. His brother shook his head, opening the passenger door and getting out to stretch.

It was a couple of hours longer drive from Richmond, he thought, opening his door and pulling the keys out as he got to his feet. Could've just been that. Highway trouble. A late start. Flat battery in her phone.

None of the possibilities struck him as being even remotely likely. Going to the trunk, he unlocked it and pulled out the gear bags, hearing his brother pull their duffels from the back seat and shut the door, a few seconds later the sounds of the motel room door opening. Lying the shotgun he used to prop up the false bottom of the trunk back down, he closed the trunk lid and walked around the car to the room.

The prickle at the back of his neck told him that something was happening. It faint but persistent and he rubbed at it as he carried the bags of ordnance into the room.

The warning sense had been with him all his remembered life. He didn't know when he'd first started to rely on it, there hadn't been one concrete moment, but a series of hunches, of gut feelings, subliminal warnings at the last second, warnings that had saved his life, sometimes his brother's, sometimes his father's.

He tried to tell himself that she could've been peripherally involved in one of those big spring pile-ups that happened on the interstates when fog closed them in. Tried to tell himself that it might just be a warning, not a premonition. It didn't matter, he found.

"You want to get something to eat?" Sam asked, dropping his duffel on the floor next to the bed at the far end of the room, turning and dumping Dean's onto the bed closest to the door. "Crash early tonight?"

Dean nodded absently, putting the gear bag on the table and looking around the bland, characterless room without knowing what he was looking for.

She was in this because of him, he thought, walking to the bathroom. In harm's way because she was trying to help him. He stopped at the sink and turned on the cold tap, filling his hands under the flow and splashing the water over his face.

"Dean?" Sam called from just outside the door. "You okay?"

"M'fine, Sammy," he said, turning the water off and leaning on the sink.

She was good, he told himself, and on her guard. Nothing had happened. He was just too wired, too anxious about the next day. He lifted his head and looked at the reflection facing him in the mirror, his gaze cutting away as he saw the doubt on the face that looked back at him.

* * *

The diner was almost empty, and they took a booth near the back. Dean felt around in his pocket, pulling out his phone and the scrap of paper his brother had given him with Ellie's cell number on it. He punched in the number and listened, brows drawing together as her voice advised him to leave a message.

"We should have organised something to meet earlier, Sam," he said, turning the phone off and returning it to his pocket. He looked down at his burger, feeling his appetite vanish. "Her cell's still going to voicemail."

"Maybe she's somewhere without coverage," Sam suggested, his brow creasing as he watched his brother put the burger back on the plate, barely half-eaten.

Dean shook his head. "I'm getting a bad feeling."

"What kind of bad feeling?"

"Like something's gone really wrong, kind of feeling," he said, his voice low as he looked around the quiet diner. "I don't know."

"Maybe you're just worried about tomorrow?" Sam looked at him. He was worried about tomorrow. It was one thing to spend all that time searching for something that would work. Tomorrow they would be doing it, going up against Lilith, giving everything they had into one final throw of the dice.

"Yeah, maybe," Dean said, sliding out of the booth. "Let's get back to the room. I need some sleep."

Sam nodded, pushing his own plate aside. Suddenly he wasn't so hungry either. "Okay."

* * *

_**April 30, 2008**_

Ellie woke in a plain white room. The large surfaces of the walls were glass, opaque, a milky white that didn't seem to be a surface cover. She sat up, looking around. No truck, no pack, no bag, no phone, not even her watch. She exhaled loudly, rolling onto her feet and standing.

No furniture either. And, she realised belatedly, no doors. She walked to one of the glass walls, tapping experimentally on it with her knuckles. From the feel, it was thick, very thick.

An angel.

Uriel, technically an archangel.

She remembered everything up to the point he'd grabbed her shoulder. But nothing of coming here. She bit her lip, turning over the possibilities she could think of as she began to circle the room slowly. Either it'd been one hell of a Vulcan mindmeld, wiping her memories … or she'd been transported here instantaneously, teleported by the angel. Stopping in the centre of the space, she dismissed the thought. It wasn't likely she was going to find out either way.

Behind her, one of the glass walls was changing, a light forming in the centre. She caught the change in the light as it played on the other walls, and turned slowly. The glass wall lit up and then cleared, becoming transparent.

Only it didn't look out over the surroundings, she realised, taking a step closer to it. She was looking into a motel room, two beds, a small table and two men, neither smiling or joking around.

She closed her eyes and turned away. They were packing their gear. From the little light that came through the motel's curtains, it was early, just after dawn, she thought. She'd been out for more than fifteen hours.

Behind her, Sam and Dean finished packing and went out the door. There was no sound but the flickering changes in the light on the other walls told her that the wall was showing the early daylight of an outside area.

"You think this is funny?" she yelled suddenly at the room in general, knowing that someone, probably Uriel, was watching her. "You can take your halo and shove it up your ass!"

The other three walls lit up, their opaque white dissolving as they slowly became transparent. Ellie dropped to the floor in the centre of the room, closing her eyes as she was surrounded by the same environment that the brothers were walking through. It didn't matter which way she turned, she thought, the light changing against her tightly shut lids. She would see them. See the disappointment, then the discouragement and finally the despair on their faces when she didn't turn up.

She'd known angels were fierce creatures, the army of God, sword bearers, warriors, weapons. It'd never occurred to her that they might be deliberately cruel, deliberately malicious.

* * *

_**5.59 a.m. Cahokia, Illinois**_

Dean parked in the side street, a block away from the log-built church. His eyes felt gritty with lack of sleep, formless fears and unidentifiable shadows had chased through his dreams through the night, leaving him tired and with a residue of low-grade uneasiness.

They hadn't seen the pickup in their slow cruise around the block. It set off his bad feeling again and he rubbed at the back of his neck as he got out of the car and looked around. The neighbourhood seemed quiet. The sky was brightening but the sun wouldn't rise for another ten or fifteen minutes, Sam'd said.

Walking obliquely through the church's open grounds, they were ready with their excuses if anyone was around, their hands in their pockets, fingers curled around the grips of their automatics if anything other than human showed up.

If demons had got her, Dean thought uncomfortably, they might have a welcoming committee in the church. Sam appeared to have the same thought, easing his auto out of his pocket and checking the mag again as Dean knelt at the back door and pulled out his picks.

The lock gave and the door swung open, the interior dark and silent. Slipping inside and pulling the door closed behind them, they found themselves in the vestry. There was no tainted smell of sulphur. No indication that anyone was there but them.

"Well, I guess we just wait then," Sam said, snicking the safety back on his handgun and putting it back into his pocket as he set the gear bag down on the table. "Where do you think she'll want to set it up?"

"Uh … in front of the altar, probably," Dean said distractedly, his gaze flicking around the long, wide room. "Sammy, you getting any vibes? This is feeling … off."

"No," Sam said, his brow furrowing as he saw his brother's discomfort. "What? You think it's a trap?"

"No." Dean shook his head, trying to find the words to explain what he was feeling. "Not a trap for us … I don't know. I feel like there's something … just … wrong."

Sam glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was six-fifteen.

* * *

Ellie had retreated to one corner of the room, putting her back to the corner, drawing up her legs and tucking her head into her arms, folded over her knees.

She didn't need to watch the church's interior to know what was happening. It'd become obvious to her that the angel was not going to kill her. She couldn't fathom a reason for being held here, with the scenes of what was going on in Illinois playing out around her. A lesson against meddling in Heaven's business, she wondered disinterestedly? The angel bored with being on earth and trying to leaven his tour here? It didn't make a difference. She was certain now that she would be here for a while. Until it was over. Until Dean was lost.

The thought brought a fiery stab of pain despite her ready defences against it, and she screwed her eyes shut, unsure whether to fight that pain off or accept it and let it wash through her, let it prepare her for what was to come. She'd been so close to making sure it couldn't happen and she'd known that someone on the divine plane had had a hand in Hell's plans and schemes, and still she hadn't taken enough precautions against them. Her mistake, but Dean would be the one paying for it, as Michael had.

_Should've, could've, didn't_, she told herself acidly. There was no percentage in wallowing in her feelings of guilt. She had to think clearly, had to figure out a way to do something to make it right.

She shut out the emotions and her thoughts, one by one, burying them deep and breathing with a forced precision until her mind was empty and black. Against the blackness behind her closed lids, she visualised a shape, a stone, polished and oval and marked with a single design, white against the black of the rock. She held the image in her mind, focussing on it until the tension had gone from her muscles and her heart beat had slowed and steadied. One of the many gifts from the man who'd trained her, it was a yogic exercise, its sole purpose to still the mind.

When she lifted her head, she felt calm. Unemotional and divorced from the scenes that surrounded her. Looking around at the walls showing the church's interior, she could see the clock through the open doorway, on the wall of the vestry. It read eight fifty-five and in the main room of the church she could see Dean pacing, Sam sitting in a pew near the altar. The expression on both their faces was worry.

* * *

_**Cahokia, Illinois**_

"You feel it now, Sam?" Dean ground out, stopping near the altar and looking through the open door at the clock. The hands pointed to the nine and the twelve. "She'd never be this late. Not unless something happened."

"What do you want to do?" Sam asked, getting to his feet. He agreed with his brother. Ellie wouldn't've left them to wait like this, without a call, without a word, unless something had happened.

"I don't know." Dean paced down the aisle, his gaze on the floor. His stomach was heaving, a headache pounding behind one eye. Something had happened, something bad. He knew it. He could feel it. "We didn't make an alternative arrangement, so we can't just leave, not yet."

He'd known they should've stayed together. He'd known it and let them talk him out of it and now it was too fucking late. A memory stabbed at him, a familiar watch, still attached to the burned-up arm that had worn it the last time he'd seen the man alive. Ash. Dead. Because he'd helped them. Turning away from Sam, he walked down to the other end of the church.

* * *

At ten o'clock, Sam's phone rang. He looked at Dean as he snatched it out of his pocket and answered it.

"Bobby? Yeah, we're here. Ellie's hasn't shown –" Sam stopped, listening. "Ah, it's a Dodge pickup, white."

Dean watched his brother's face whiten under its tan with shock.

"What!? Bobby … where?"

Turning away, he tuned out the conversation. No prizes for guessing why Bobby'd wanted to know what Ellie was driving, he thought. This was it. The bad thing. The bad feeling come home to roost.

Sam put the phone down on the table. "Bobby said it was on the news. A white Dodge pickup ran off the road just past Elberfeld." He looked at his brother. "It hit a concrete embankment and blew up, completely burned out. The police are assuming that the driver burned to death."

Dean stood with his head bowed, letting the words sink in. Car accident. A real accident or a helped-along-accident? Did it matter? Dead was dead. He felt a sharp pain, somewhere in his chest. Ellie was gone, and with her, his hope.

It was over.

"Dean? You hear me?" Sam took a step closer to him.

"Yeah, Sammy, I heard you," he said, lifting his head and looking coolly at his brother. "We did this all wrong."

"I know –"

"No. You don't know," Dean said, his voice roughening. "I should've gone with her, got the stuff it needed and left her out of it –"

"Dean, this is not your fault," Sam interrupted, suddenly seeing the burden his brother had taken up. "She was good, there's no way you could've seen this –"

"She's dead," Dean cut him off sharply. He ducked his head for a moment then started walking toward the vestry.

"Wait a – where are you going?" Sam grabbed the bag from the pew and slung it over his shoulder.

"Back to Bobby's," Dean said over his shoulder. "We've still got a Plan B."

"Dean, we need to get Ruby –"

"No!" He stopped in the doorway and swung around to face him. "No, we're done with fucking help, from anyone, Sammy. We'll deal with this ourselves."

"But she –" Sam stopped talking, hurrying after Dean as his brother lengthened his stride and slammed out of the church.

* * *

Ellie watched Sam put down the phone. The shocked expression on his face, the bitterness on Dean's, told her what the call had been about. Her truck, without a driver, had probably run off the road, with or without a little help. Bobby might've seen it on the news. They thought she was dead.

And she might've as well have been, she thought, pushing aside her hair with the inside of her wrist. The only way to summon and kill the demon was gone, probably burned up with the pickup.

For the first time in a long, long time, she felt completely helpless.

* * *

_**May 2nd 2008.**_

In the room of glass, Ellie watched in horror as Dean was flung across the room, landing on his back on a table. Against the wall, Sam struggled against the same force pinning him there, like a bug on display, his expression twisting up in distaste as a slender blonde woman walked to him, exuding an air of mocking innocence.

Ruby, Ellie thought, watching her turn her head to look at Dean. The little-girl look disappeared as she pouted and swung away.

Walking to the door, the blonde opened it and smiled, staring at Dean. Ellie's breath hissed in when she saw his eyes widen then screw shut. Something unseen ripped through his thigh, another bloody and torn wound appearing on his shoulder. It gripped his leg, pulling him down to the floor and gaping, bloody wounds opened on his legs, shredding his chest.

Fighting against the power that held him to the wall, Sam stood open-mouthed, his gaze fixed on what was happening to his brother then flicking to the woman, the tendons in his throat leaping out as he screamed at her.

Struggling to roll over as great raking claw marks ribboned his clothing and flesh indiscriminately, Dean's face contorted in agony as his back was laid open by them, arching backward uncontrollably, his mouth open wide and filling with blood.

Ellie sat rigidly, her fists clenched, her head pounding as she saw the blood flowing and pooling on the floor beneath him. He was thrown over again onto his back and the claws opened his chest, breaking the ribs. She was unaware of the tears that flowed down her cheeks as she saw him pulled one way then the other, the hellhounds' jaws cleaving through bone as easily as flesh. On the floor, his eyes were open but unseeing as he lay broken, panting, trying to breathe.

By the French doors, Ruby smiled at Sam, her eyes becoming a milky white as she lifted her hand toward him. The light that exploded from her hand filled the room, and Sam crouched beside the cabinet, his arms flung up to shield his face.

Not Ruby, Ellie realised, her breath catching in her throat.

_Lilith_.

The light died, and the woman's expression changed from spiteful glee to uncertainty as Sam lowered his arms, and slowly rose to his feet. He watched her face as an expression no other human had ever seen on her grew and spread.

_Fear_.

In her prison, Ellie stared at the demon and the man who faced her. Lilith's power was considerable and it'd had no impact at all on Sam. She couldn't think what that meant.

Sam took a deep breath and took a step toward the woman.

Taking a step away from him, the demon held her hand up, her intent clear as she seemed to order him back. Did she believe her will alone could stop him, where her power could not, Ellie wondered? She watched the fear on the woman's face grow as he bent to pick up a thick-bladed, serrated knife from the floor. Ellie saw his face harden, saw his lips draw back from his teeth in a furious snarl as the tip of the blade rose. Lilith's eyes widened at the sight of the knife, her eyes flicking up and her mouth opening at the sight of his determination to kill her with it.

The ancient demon exited the blonde woman's body, a thick torrent of charcoal smoke rushing out of the woman's mouth and upward to flee into a vent as he lunged forward abruptly.

The body collapsed on the floor beside Dean and Sam let his hand fall, the blade tip pointing at the ground as he looked down at his brother. Ellie saw his chest hitch as his breath caught in his throat, watched as his face crumpled when he took in the still chest, the cessation of blood flow, the fixed and open gaze of Dean's eyes.

Sam dropped to his knees next to his brother, his hand slipping under the back of Dean's head and lifting it gently. Ellie turned away as she saw the tears spill from his eyes.

It was over. Dean was dead.

In the room of glass, Ellie buried her head in her arms, her shoulders shaking as she wept.

* * *

"You're quite a wildcard, aren't you?" Uriel looked down at her.

On the floor, in the corner, Ellie sat, silent and unmoving. She'd finished with crying. Her grief was locked away.

"I would have bet an eternity in Heaven that no one would be able to find the things necessary to destroy Lilith, and put it all together. The Winchesters didn't. But you did. How is that, I wonder?" the angel mused, walking around her, his expression speculative.

"We'll have to keep an eye on you, I think. I did advise that it would be safer for everyone if you were dead," he told her, sighing deeply. "But for now, at least, my orders are to let you go. You can't do any more damage to our plan."

He crouched in front of her, and gripped her arm and she lifted her gaze to meet his. "Time to go, hunter. I'll have to wipe out some of your memories, just so it's not too easy for you to give the game away, but I'll leave you with the memories of watching Winchester die. They say sorrow builds character more than joy."

"Why do you want Lucifer freed?" she asked, pulling back against his grip as he hauled her to her feet. "Why are you disobeying your Father?"

She saw him flinch back slightly at that, his fingers digging into her shoulder in reaction. "My Father has forsaken us," he hissed at her, thrusting his face close to hers. "And we have waited a long, long time for our paradise."

* * *

_**May 3, 2008. Richmond, Virginia.**_

Ellie woke suddenly, in her apartment, on her bed. Her eyes were sore and she lifted a finger tentatively to the lids, feeling the swelling. Her mouth was dry and as she sat up, she realised that her head was hurting, throbbing as if she'd been hit.

Getting up slowly and cautiously, she walked to the small bathroom that adjoined her bedroom. At the sink, she turned on the cold water, filling her hands and splashing it over her face, the cold bite of it backing off the pain and clearing her head.

He was dead.

The memory came back clearly, his eyes open and unseeing, lying on the floor. She flinched back a little, her hand reaching out to twist the tap off as she looked into the mirror of the cupboard over the sink. Her eyes were red, the lids swollen, the lashes tangled. A droplet of blood pooled in one nostril and she frowned at the mirror, wiping it away.

What the hell had happened?

She'd been on her way to the church, she knew that. Then … there was nothing, nothing but anguished memories of watching Dean torn apart. Closing her eyes, she leaned on the edge of the sink, trying to push the images out of her consciousness as grief filled her throat and tightened her chest.

Another memory slid into their place and she saw again the demon's eyes turn to white, light filling her palm as she extended it toward Sam. Sam had been on the floor and he'd turned away, eyes screwing shut, his arms over his face. The light had died and she'd seen recognition fill his face, recognition that whatever Lilith had thrown at him, it'd done nothing. In her mind's eye, she saw him get up, saw his confusion transform to rage. He'd been immune to Lilith's power, advancing on the demon with a demon's knife held in his hand.

Picking up the glass next to the toothpaste, she twisted the tap on again and filled it, drinking it all. _Slow down_, she told herself. _Slow down and think it all through_.

Dean was gone. Her truck, with the only artefacts that could kill Lilith, was gone. Sam was alone, and in possession of some kind of power, she thought uneasily, setting the glass back and turning away from the mirror.

She walked out of the bathroom to the kitchenette, glancing at her study as she passed and slowing as her gaze took in the piles and stacks of books that surrounded the desk.

Something had happened. Something had prevented her from getting there. Something had kept her long enough for Dean's deal to come due. It'd been the 29th when she'd been driving. The deal had been due at midnight, on the 2nd.

Going to the desk, she reached across for her laptop and opened it. It loaded the desktop and her eyes narrowed as she saw the date. May 3rd. Four days. She'd been held _somewhere_ for at least four days.

Beside the laptop, a thick file caught her attention.

_And it is written, that the First Seal shall be broken when a Righteous Man sheds blood in Hell. As he breaks, so shall it break. For Heaven will reach down as Hell reaches up and the Righteous man who begins it will be the only one who can end it._

Heaven had certainly reached down, she thought, suppressing the shiver at the rest of the prophecy. She had no memories of them, or where she'd been taken, but it could only have been the angels, ensuring that nothing interfered with whatever plan they had for the Morning Star. Looking down at the file, she rubbed her brow with her fingertips, the headache still throbbing behind one eye. Why would anyone want to release the devil? Why had it had to be Dean?

Dean's soul was in Hell. As his father's soul had been before him. Was that coincidental? She remembered him telling her that John had a made a deal with the fallen they'd called Yellow Eyes. She'd told him that the demon wouldn't've made the deal if he hadn't wanted John Winchester for something.

Father. Son.

John had gotten out when the gate had opened.

He'd been down there for over a hundred years, in Hell's time. And they'd still wanted Dean.

Turning and walking to the kitchen, Ellie filled the coffee pot absently, her thoughts churning. They'd wanted – no, they _needed_, she corrected herself carefully – a righteous man. The world presumably had plenty of them, why choose a single family?

Setting the pot on the machine, she spooned the grounds into the filter and closed the lid, hitting the switch as she replaced the can in the cupboard, her actions automatic, her eyes unfocussed.

There were legends about families, she remembered. Bloodlines. Looking back at the desk, she thought she'd read about them somewhere in the piles of books that filled the small space. Katherine might know. She was turning for the desk and the phone on it when another thought hit and she stopped dead in the middle of the room.

She was thought to be dead. There were some people she had to let know the truth, but others it might be safer to keep in the dark. Chewing on the corner of her lip, she thought about Bobby … and Sam. He would need people around him, she knew. Need people to grieve with, people to lean on and to help him find a way to get his brother back, but she wasn't sure he was safe.

_He told that I had to protect Sam, had to save him. Told me if I couldn't save him … uh … I might have to kill him._

Dean's voice came back to her, the dark room, the long wait. His father had told him that Sam might turn into something, she remembered. But Dean hadn't known what he'd meant, not exactly. She couldn't think what it might mean either, but she couldn't risk what she had to do if there was a chance that whatever John Winchester had been afraid of, had told his oldest son about, happened to Sam while she was trying to get into Hell and he knew about the attempt.

Continuing slowly to the desk, she picked up the handset, listening to the dial tone for a few seconds as she made her list. Kasha was the most important, she decided.

* * *

Dusk filled the small apartment silently and incrementally and Ellie looked up in surprise when she realised she couldn't read the fine, spidery text of the book in front of her any longer. She got up and stretched, rolling her shoulders against the tension at the base of her neck and went to the windows, looking down at the shadowed street and drawing the curtains closed against the darkness. Moving around the apartment, she turned on the lights; the lamps in the living area and on her desk, the kitchen and bedroom and bathroom lights, needing the brightness to counteract the doubts that she was ignoring about what she was considering.

Kasha had told her that certain bloodlines, certain families, were essential to both the denizens of Heaven and Hell, but she hadn't known why or any details. She'd promised to look it up. Katherine and Seb had known even less, although both had agreed to check with their contacts, discreetly. The _why_ wasn't important now. The _how_ was what she had to find out, to figure out.

She was going to have to find a way into Hell, a way for a mortal being, for a flesh and blood body. Her friends had been able to help there. There were many ways to cross the boundaries between plane and plane, from summoning and binding the spirit guides, the psychopomps, who travelled easily between them; to the rituals to find and open the gates and near-fakir states that allowed the soul to slip across the walls. All of them were perilous. None of the people closest to her had been happy to hear of what she'd planned.

And no one had been able to help with a ritual to bring him out, lift his soul and return him to his body. Black magic, Kasha had told her, her voice tight with offence at the idea. What was dead should stay dead. Deadly magic, Katherine had said, even for an adept. The incantations lost hundreds of years ago. And good riddance, Seb had added.

She needed Patrick, she thought, his knowledge of the Vatican documents on resurrections and soul guides. And John. But neither were contactable and she didn't have the time to waste searching for them.

Making a fresh pot of coffee, she leaned against the counter as it bubbled to itself, staring at the phone. She hadn't called Bobby. Or Sam. Or any of the hunters they were in contact with. They would understand, she hoped. She had very little time and none to spare for anyone but Dean, not even herself.

Hell's time was different from this plane. Every three days that passed here would be year for him. Her stomach heaved at the thought and she forced the feeling down, eyes closed tightly. She wouldn't be able to do this if she gave any breathing room to thoughts of what was happening to him.

Behind her, the pot hissed and she turned around, filling her cup with the hot, black liquid. Carrying it back to her desk, she started to look through the books that were stacked everywhere. Somewhere, here, or in the oldest libraries in the world, she'd find the answers she needed. Others had made the journey before her.

On the scarred wooden surface of the desk, beside the book that was opened, her notes were filling the small, leather-bound diary. A blueprint for damnation, she thought, looking at them.

The levels and the demons who controlled them, the paths and doorways through and between them, the dangers and what was needed to pass, not soul but flesh, through the blasted lands. Hell was not a fixed and material kingdom. It was governed by rules – of spirit and flesh and mind – but travelling through it, those rules changed according to the manner of entry.

How a soul perceived the accursed plane was different from how mortal eyes could see it. Souls, and their indivisible component of mind, of self, could not give up the memories of their bodies, couldn't let go of how they'd seen themselves in life. For those who refused to cross over, they remained as images, sometimes echoes, sometimes coherent manifestations of the unsettled mind. Burning the remains allowed them to be released.

On the other planes, however, they couldn't jettison the familiarity of flesh and bone and blood, of nerves and organs. Lucifer had seen it, when Lilith had been given to him. He had refined the process and taught all the demons of his domain how to create suffering. The torture of the souls used that inability, to torment without release, an endless sea of agony that would, over time, transform the soul into the darkest aspect, the shadow of itself … into a demon.

She understood now, why Michael had never taught her how to cross over. The very nature of Hell meant that a soul venturing inside its borders would face torture that came from itself. Each and every soul there conceived its own Hell, the demons drinking the pain from the guilt and shame, burning and renting and inflicting the excruciating agonies the individual minds themselves provided. She had enough outwardly invisible and bone-deep scars to know what would've happened to her.

Going in mortal and in her bones was the only way. The layout of the levels would remain fixed, most of the hellspawn would be unable to perceive her and she wouldn't be affected by the irreparable damage of her own life's pain.

The phone rang and she started a little at it, snatching up the handset.

"Ellie?" Yure's voice was deep and warm, inflected with an Eastern European accent. "There is a Benedictine monastery, near the border between China and Afghanistan. The precentor is Father Monserrat, he says there are many ancient documents in the labyrinth of vaults beneath the monastery. He thinks you will find what you need there."

She thought about the region, the borders and the conflict raging through the area as the US poured more troops in. She hadn't heard of fighting that far north but it was mostly guerrilla warfare in the high mountains and the press didn't get the half of it.

"I'll have to go in from Tashkurgan," she told him, wondering if the British were still operating that far north in the country. "Thank you, Yure."

"Ellie, aside from the fact that you're heading into a war zone," the Russian began acerbically. "to find information that is itself deadly to the soul, we are worried about what you intend to do with it."

She looked down at her notes, unable to think of a response to that.

"If Heaven has manipulated this man and his family, has conspired with Hell … it is something they will not relinquish easily, they will come –" he continued, his tone gentling, and her fingers gripped the handset, her jaw setting.

"Yure, would you be able to leave Kasha in Hell, just to be safe?" she cut over him tersely.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line then the breathy sound of an exhale. "No."

"I'll see you soon," she said, her eyes closing. "I'll be careful."

"Please, _krykhitka,_ be very, very careful."

Hanging up the phone, she dragged in a deep breath. She would need help, she thought, picking up her pen. A lot of it.

* * *

_**Hell.**_

Dean felt the brush of heated wind against his body, the thick scent of sulphur filling his nose. Heat rose around him, bringing a sheen of sweat to his skin. _Just a dream_, he told himself, unwilling to open his eyes. He didn't want to see. _Just having a real bad dream_.

The sound of laughter surrounded him and he squeezed his eyes shut more tightly.

Without warning, pain exploded in his joints, rending and tearing at him as he felt the hooks pull further apart, ripping through the muscle and tendons.

_It's a prison, made of bone and flesh and blood and fear. _Sam's voice, but not Sam. The demon had told him about Hell when he'd been trying to get her out of his brother.

"HELP! NO! SOMEBODY HELP ME!" the scream tore out of his throat as the pain increased. "SAM! SAM!"

"Dean Winchester," a rasping low voice said somewhere nearby. "At last."

* * *

**END**

_**AN:** This series continues with **Someday Never Comes**, originally titled 'Disposable Heroes' but renamed as I have another story with that title that is ongoing. Ellie's involvement with the Winchesters picks up a couple of months after Dean is raised from Hell, and Heaven continues to conspire to release the devil._


End file.
